These times

I started blogging on November 12th, 2006. If you aren't quick with the math (don't feel bad) that was exactly nine years ago today.

Here is what I wrote:

This is actually my second post.

Okay, I'm lying. It's my first post. But the first post is always really boring and annoying, right? It's a post that says something like:

Hi! Welcome to my blog! I have no freaking idea what I'm going to say now! Hehe!

Really, I'm not much of a "hehe" kind of chick. I can't even get it together enough to care right now. I have stuff I want to say and I'm not going to be bothered to introduce myself right now. Now, on to the interesting stuff.

Being a mother of a little boy is really a unique experience. I just put his laundry into the dryer and in the bottom of the washing machine I found:
1) An unopened package of Whoppers (the candy, you know, chocolate malted milk balls?)
2) Two empty Skittles packages
3) A plastic cockroach
4) A plastic dinosaur
5) A plastic glow in the dark bat

Sigh.

So, I called him in.

"Son," I said. "I need to talk to you about your laundry."

"What," says he. "Did I get skidmarks in my boxer shorts again?"

Sweet. God. He's such a man already and only eight years old.

No worse than my daughter, however, who earlier today in the shower gleefully announced, "MOM! I'M DONE! I WASHED MY HAIR AND MY FACE AND MY PENIS!"

Sigh.

"SWEETHEART!" I shouted back. "YOU DON'T HAVE A PENIS!"

"OH I FORGOT! I MEANT MY BAGINA!"

To which my husband replied, "GOD! STOP TALKING ABOUT SEX ORGANS!"

Our neighbors? I imagine they hate us a lot.

Funny, right? We used to be funny. 

Also? My children used to be eight. When they were eight, they liked me.

I think they still like me, just not the way they used to. One of them (hint: The male one) thinks he knows a lot more than me now. This is normal, I hear. I've never had a really normal relationship with my children, so basically I have to rely on other people and their narratives about what life is like with teenagers. Everyone keeps telling me, this is normal. He has his own mind. You've raised him to have his own mind. You want him to have his own mind.

I know this.  All of these things are true. 

It's hard though. It's actually really hard.

Because sometimes the things teenagers think they know? Are very far away from what mom and dad have worked so hard to teach. Which is really, painfully sucky.

He's a good kid. He's a good son. He gets good grades. He works his part-time job. He drives likes he's an old man. He weighs decisions cautiously. He keeps his personal drama to a minimum and really isn't even sassy. Okay, he's sassy. But not at me. He just inherited my sarcasm gene. He can't help it. 

It's just...he doesn't talk to me the way he used to. He doesn't listen to me the way he used to.

And I miss it. I miss it really hard.

I know, I know. There are many mothers of teenage sons who are screaming as they read this, "I WISH THIS WAS THE ONLY PROBLEM I HAD WITH MINE!" I get that. Things could be really terrible right now and I know this. He could be coming home saying he'd wrecked his car (or not coming home at all after wrecking his car, which would be unbelievably worse). He could be saying things like, "Me and my girlfriend are going to be on the next episode of 16 and Pregnant!" He could be failing out of school or in jail or a million other things. I'm thankful, God I cannot even tell you how thankful, that this is not the case. 

But I miss him. I do. I miss how things used to be. I miss his sunny, funny attitude. I miss how I used to be his favorite person in the world. I miss how he used to listen to me, and think I knew everything (which of course I don't, like at all, but I didn't want him to figure it out so early on). 

The bright spot in my life is that I now have this type of relationship with my daughter. I always wanted this, but she was always fiercely independent and much more reserved. Now, she needs me. She listens to my advice. I'm the first person she comes to, whether the news is good or bad. We have the closeness that I always longed for with her, and I believe she will grow up and and I will have that close mother/daughter relationship that I want. I want to be the first call she makes when her heart is broken or when she's engaged or when she gets into grad school or sells her first novel. I want to be that person for her. I am glad she is letting me. I am glad she is opening up. I am so, so glad she's my daughter. I always have been. 

We have grown, we have grown. We have to. I know this. 

I know that five years from now, or ten years from now the landscape will look a little different. There is nothing guaranteed in life. The years have absolutely flown by. They won't stop.

I just wish, just for a moment, we could be back in 2006. I could have it all to do again. I would appreciate it more, these moments. I wish I could have blogging back the way it used to be too. I wish I could have the relationships from it, the friendships, the feeling of community. I wish I could feel like people still cared what I had to say. 

I miss all of this. I really, really miss it.