We’re at the river beach, the one we’ve trundled down to for six years, each summer the kids inexplicably one year older. I watch, bewildered, their long legs propelling them to the shore, as if the physics of 365 days passing is a concept I’ve yet to grasp. Col, Rose and their friend Cedar sail off in an inner tube and return with a fat, warty toad, that seems unalarmed with the turn of events.
I’ve been here on a million weekdays, and it’s always the outdoor PlayStation for the baby-toothed set, but today is Sunday, and the beach is colonized by loud, lanky, muscled, cussing humans. Teenagers. They’re drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and likely not wearing sunscreen.
I watch them like a nervous anthropologist: Surely these teens are a different line of modern human than what my children will evolve into. Like Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, this is where we part ways. Coed groups circle up, pheromones boomeranging between acres of exposed skin. Their brains seem developed precisely for sarcasm and loud whoops.
And yet, in twice the years my kids have been alive, they, too, will be teens. And I can pretend now, as they fawn over a warty toad and laugh at my jokes with gaping mouth-holes of missing teeth, that they won’t someday show up, acned and posturing, to receive their Oscar for Most Surly and Secretive Teen. Of course they will.
But now is now, and today I hand them the Oscar for Mental Buoyancy. Their kid-minds are well-lit places where the bucking broncos of kindness, wonder and curiosity can’t be tamed. Just before we hit the river beach, Cedar’s mom, Julia, texts: Are her car keys in Cedar’s beach bag? Without being asked, Col runs the keys back on the trail to the parking lot. My heart folds in on itself, like a telescoping organ collapsing from so much maternal pride.
Give these children a park full of trees, and they see a course for hide and seek. Give them cardboard and duct tape, and they’ll riff like musicians on a thousand different engineering melodies. While their femurs and earlobes grow, so do the lesser known organs of generosity and courage.
Last week, riding bikes, we spied two spotted deer fawns. One second later, Rose was splayed on the concrete, bike toppled over her. The world went silent and still – our family’s collective breath held – until Rose shouted earnestly from underneath the purple metal, “Look! There’s the Mama deer!” as if she finally tired of starring in the movie, “It’s All About Me.”
And yet, quick as everything new clamors to the surface, much is shed. Each year is a peeling away of layers. I’ve given away slings and cribs, kid-potties and boxes of stackable, soft toys. I’ve given up the nursing rocker in which I spent years cradling someone’s milk-scented body. Out went the 12-inch bikes and, last week, the 16-inch bikes. Sometimes, parenthood is simply the practicing of the yoga pose, the letting go-asana, which looks something like this: knees and head bent to the earth in immense gratitude for these golden lives, while your children inch farther away.
The toad floats around its kid-built pond. The teenagers strut and preen like the beautiful, wild animals they are. Col, Rose and Cedar hold a summit about where to release Toady and are so democratic and skilled that I’m enlisting them to lead Congress’ next Communication Retreat. Some days I see the 1,000 poses of letting go already behind me, and the thousands yet ahead, and I am grateful for being right in the middle, at the river on a gorgeous September day.
Reach Rachel Turiel at sanjuandrive@frontier.net.Visit her blog, 6512 and growing, on raising children, chickens and other messy, rewarding endeavors at 6,512 feet.
