Last Sunday my youngest son turned 16. I wasn't there to celebrate, as my husband and I had to divide and conquer: I went to Parents Weekend for the college student; and dad managed birthday weekend (Chief's football game) mixed with high school Homecoming weekend for the sophomore. It's hard to believe this is where we are.
Will was an easy pregnancy, even though he laid wrapped around me sideways like a damn tire and I always felt like I should turn sideways to walk through a doorway. And he was an easy delivery. My doctor suggested, since I had proven I could do this fairly uneventfully once before, that we schedule an induction on the due date. Works for me, I said. How about a week earlier? Funny, she said. But no.
Fine. On September 23rd I went in at 8 am, had a drip by 8:30, an epidural by 11, and a baby at 2:20 pm. Easy as pie. Except for the part where he peed into the doctor's face and hair as he skidded out the canal into her arms. He literally peed coming out. I may have mentioned this before, but this would be the first in a long history of peeing in inappropriate places.
He was the most relaxed infant you've ever seen, except for the part where he screamed every day at 5:30 pm like a freaking clock. It was horrible, and there was nothing you could do to make it stop. I learned to relax and let it go. Visitors had more trouble accepting it. It didn't really stop until after he was four or five months old. He wasn't really a colicky baby, because it wasn't all the time, it was literally every day at 5:30 for about 30 minutes. Otherwise, he was pretty chill.
Sometimes it's hard being the second child. Or the third, fourth, whatever. The youngest. There are no fancy scrapbooked baby picture albums, we can't even be bothered to doctor out the red eye sometimes. There's a lot of hand-me-down toys, clothes and shoes, at least until they're old enough to care or their bodies don't match the sizes anymore.
Sometimes it's better, though. Parents hover less, when they've been through it all once before and everyone survived, so you get a little more freedom (or less, depending on that older sibling's choices.) I definitely hover less in some ways, but more in others. I'm trying to keep my helicopter parked and stored. I try harder now than I did with his older brother.
I hovered over Will more when he was younger because he had no fear, of anything. Thus he had to be watched more closely. If there was water, he'd jump in, before he knew how to swim. I had to keep a boating certified floating vest on him - the kind with a handle at the top of the neck, anytime we went to a pool, because he would just jump right in. I put him in swim lessons at age 2, after I had to go in twice fully clothed to get him out of the pool, speedy little bugger. Once he knew how to swim, he started swan diving off the high dive, running from the back of the board. It was hard to watch, the lifeguards always stood up and prepared to go in until his little head popped up just as happy as he could be. Rock Climbing? Yes. Roller Coasters? Hell yes. Boogie Boarding? Eh, well, frankly he was more interested in just digging in the sand. An enigma, this one.
This child who was once a chubby, dense toddler is now lean and stringy. He is a lot like my brother, actually, in build - lanky and broad shouldered, not as tall, though he will probably get taller than he is now; and personality - just as goddamn stubborn. He can't help that. He comes from a long line of midwestern, dustbowl surviving, stubborn as an ox and just as strong, do it my way, people. It runs deep.
And as he got older, he did develop a wee bit of a temper. And by wee bit I mean Zero to Shit Storm in about 30 seconds. He didn't have a short fuse; he had no fuse at all.
He can still throw down like the toddler days sometimes. Those hormones surging through his scrawny adolescent frame still sometimes takeover and push all brain function into the frontal lobe. The only difference is that it doesn't happen in the grocery store, it's a show reserved just for me or dad at home where it's safe. He can sometimes be a walking middle finger. We've learned to manage that a little better, as part of the overall protocol to help with focus and attention at school, and making sure he eats. He's like a Snickers commercial, put some food in him and the Gremlins go away. (Shut up about my mixed similes.)
But he's also kind. He loves little kids. He loves dogs, even though he's severely allergic to most of them (thus the poodle at our house.) He loves playing drums and marimba. He loves composing for percussion. And he's good at it, too. He loves playing goalkeeper in soccer. He likes all of these things more than school. He still has trouble maintaining focus, he got that from genetics, too. Sorry about that, dude. But he knows what he needs, he's learned how to set the right conditions to be successful, and sometimes he even makes those choices for himself without being reminded. Progress.
I'm clean out of little people at my house. My fridge is full of Cokes and Gatorade instead of juice boxes, my freezer holds Hot Pockets instead of breaded Dino Chicken. Although, the frozen waffle supply is the pretty much the same. He drives himself most places, so he relies on me less, unless its far and/or at night. This is okay, and yet sometimes I am lost because of it. What will I do when he also leaves for college? I may have to side hustle and drive for Uber just to feel needed.
He is doing so well overall, at 16, that most of the time I can keep my helicopter in storage. I keep her gassed up, though. You never know.