Flying

I think that my eighteen year old son is about a zillion times more mature, erudite, intellectual and worldly than I was at his age. J and I sat in awed silence as he delivered his final gateway - a thesis based on the essential question "How do my reflections improve my work habits" with a power point, pictures, video, props and support from each of the classes he takes in school, as well as his senior projects. That is, math, physics, chemistry, Spanish, literature, human rights, robotics, design, magazine, internship, film, etc. He presented for about an hour, whereupon his teachers and the head of school asked him questions about the work and about how he sees his next year at college. I was slack-jawed at the end by the depth of thought he put into his answers. "I was really holding it together" J confessed to me in a whisper at the end, "I nearly cried." As I'd been biting the inside of my cheek for the last forty five minutes, I was relieved to hear this. We both stared at him over a lunch of sweet Japanese curry (at Blue Marlin on Sawtelle) and told him how ridiculously proud we were. The curry wasn't very good, I'm afraid. I thought the C rating was a bit of a hint, but J insisted that he and Chris eat there all the time and the food is terrific. N ordered something called Om-Rice with Breaded Pork cutlet and sweet curry. It looked like an enormous yellow fish (the omelet) lying on his plate. "So how come you got a C rating" asked J with a smile. The waiter was sweet. "The inspector came and we weren't prepared" he said. Bad answer, I thought. I picked at my rice.

You bring a child into the world. You have no idea what you're doing. You make mistakes. Actually, you make a lot of mistakes. (I, for instance, made Ned terrified of the garbage man because of my neurotic fear that he'd be whisked away by a "stranger" so that every time the rubbish truck came he'd hide behind a curtain. Oy!) But you try and you learn and you hope you're doing the right thing. And you give advice, most of it not heeded, and you watch and you hope a bit more, and you go through hell, and they go through hell, and you wonder if it's ever going to get any better. And then one day, you watch them soar. Completely on their own. They just spread out those little baby wings which have miraculously grown and they take one elegant step skyward and suddenly they're flying, whooshing about above your head, whirling and turning and somersaulting and doing things you can't even imagine. It's pretty wild.