When a Child Is a Man

The Boston Herald

Of all the birthdays in all the years, this one should be the most insignificant. It's wedged among benchmarks. My oldest daughter just turned 21. My youngest teeters on 16. Our best friends just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. My husband and I will be celebrating our 25th in January.

Among all these, my son's 23rd birthday should not stand out. It's just another day. It has no special meaning. And yet I am stunned by a number that's supposed to mean nothing.

He’s 23 today. So what? Why do I keep rolling it around in my brain? Why does my mind snap back to it when it's supposed to be concentrating on something else? He's a grown man. He lives in Florida. This is normal. This was predictable.

Then why do I feel so strange, so uncomfortably disoriented, as if just last night I helped him with his homework, put away his baseball cards, checked to make sure there were Devil Dogs for his lunch, only to wake up this morning to find him grown and gone.

Twenty-three. When I turned 23, he was three months old. I  was a wife and mother, a certified adult. But I was still my mother's child. Did she feel as dazed as I feel now? Did she look at me and wonder how I ever got so old, how she should treat me, whether I would resent advice?

A woman called the other day. A stranger's voice said, "I'm Dana. I'm Rob's girlfriend." She was phoning to ask if I would mail her Rob's birth certificate so she could surprise him and take him on a one-day cruise to the Bahamas for his birthday.

"What a great present," I exclaimed. And it is. Thoughtful and romantic. But I didn't even know he had a girlfriend.

"I knew about her," my husband said. "He only just started dating her. So she hasn't been his girlfriend for long.” 

Still, it wasn't long ago that I knew everything about him. I knew that if he fell asleep in his car seat for even a minute, he wouldn't take a nap that day.  I knew that he hated peas and loved Spiderman and the game Battleship and sleeping over Grandma's. I knew, just from looking in his eyes, when he was getting a cold, when he was tired, when he was trying not to cry, when he was telling a lie.Now he has a girlfriend who cares enough about him to plan a birthday surprise - and I didn't know.

"How come you didn't mention her to me," I will not  say. "What's  she like? Is this serious?" I will not ask. I will not mother, and I will not pry.

When he was small, I had a baby book, which outlined the characteristics of children at every age. I wore that book out reading it, so I could learn what to expect from him, so that I could understood his behavior. The book wasn't exact. But it was a guide that served me well. What did I know about raising children? I'd never had one before. How did I know what to expect from a toddler or a teenager? The book walked me through the years. 

I need a guide for now, for this new stage. But there are no books for parents of adults. There are only the old dictums: You have to cut the  apron strings. You have to let them leave the nest. You have to let them go.

And so I have. I've consciously backed out of his life. But have I  backed up too far? I don't want to hover; but I don't want to retreat.

Friends with adult children living at home walk the same thin line. "Where have you been?" can be friendly or interrogatory. "What time can we expect you home?" a polite request, can be a catalyst for a quarrel. What should parents expect from children who aren't children anymore? What should adult children expect from them?

My child is not a child. He's a man. But this man is my child. It's a paradox.

So is the plaque above my desk: "There are two things that you  should give your children: One is roots and the other is wings." Long ago I gave my son roots. Only recently did I give him wings. I just hope he uses them now and then to fly back to me.