A boy needs his mother. Or not.

Today I sit in the airport waiting for the flight which will take me to San Diego, to the beach I love, to my eldest son who has been there for ten days already. He has not missed us, at all. We've called a couple of times, literally like twice-once early in the week and once on Friday evening- to see if he wanted to talk to us. "hey, Drew, wanna talk to your mom and dad?" we hear our friend Bill ask. And in the background, we hear clearly the kid's answer come booming back into our parental psyche: "nah, I'm good." Um, ok? Finally Bill entreats the child to please speak to his parents, and so he does, one word answers to our probing questions about camp and his friends and what all he's been doing without us there. He has no patience for it. It's not like I'm surprised the boy is doing fine and is not homesick. This is the child who has walked into every new classroom experience in his life as if he owned the room, without looking back to see if I was still standing in the doorway. Even as a toddler he'd push me away or struggle to get out of my arms if there was something new and interesting to investigate. I never had to detangle him from my body and hand him screaming and thrashing to a teacher who clucked at me sympathetically and said "it's ok, he'll calm down as soon as you leave." (his brother, however, Oy.) Next summer he'll be old enough to attend his first year of a full ten days at Boy Scout camp. He probably won't want to leave. I have another year to wrap my head around that.