Between child and tween

As the holiday weekend ends, I’m feeling particularly aware of the various facets of Tim’s current age (or, to use one of my mother’s favorite expressions, “age ‘n’ stage,” which she says so often that at one point in my twenties, before I’d mentally parsed it out, I wondered why everyone we knew seemed to be going through an “Asian stage.”). Often Tim and I go our separate ways for much of the day – he’s at school, I’m working; he’s off playing baseball, I’m at home making dinner; he’s doing homework, I’m reading to Holly – but now it’s summer vacation and we seem to be moving in tighter circles, in closer proximity to each other.

He came downstairs while I was closing up the house last night and asked if he could have some ice cream before bed, knowing there were a couple of pints in the freezer left over from our earlier Fourth of July cookout. I hesitated. “Normally I’d say no to ice cream twice in one day, but I guess it’s okay,” I told him. Although the idea of my kids overeating worries me, the wiry build Tim has had since he was a toddler has not changed one bit even now that he is almost twelve; his ribs stick out still. As he scooped out some mint chocolate chip, I could imagine him as a teenager, going through bowls of ice cream every day the way teenage boys do and still as skinny as ever. “He eats as much as an army, and never gains an ounce,” I’ll tell people, knowing that’s typical of teen boys.

Yes, he’ll still eat ice cream and not gain an ounce of fat, like now, but when he’s a teenager he probably won’t do some of the most endearing things he’s done this weekend. On Saturday we spent hours at the public beach in a neighboring town; there were fireworks and a concert scheduled, and we arrived early so the kids could swim in the pond. Tim and Holly played their favorite swimming game, throwing a ball into the water and then racing from the beach to see who could reach it first, and they made leg-bridges for each other to swim through. Once swimming time ended, Tim pleaded with me to throw a toy football back and forth with him (“Throw it away from me so I have to dive for it, Mom!” he ordered again and again), and at one point when Holly wanted to demonstrate a dance she’d made up but said she needed a platform to stand on, Tim obligingly crouched on the beach on all fours and let her stand on his back to do the act. “It only hurt when she stepped on my neck!” Tim proudly announced afterwards. When the fireworks began, the kids lay side by side on the sand and watched.

But yesterday Tim was all pre-adolescent as he and I helped my father transfer hay bales from the hay wagon into the barn. His answer to everything I said for a solid hour, from “Oh look, there’s a little black snake on that bale!” to “Tim, could you throw the bales a little closer to the edge of the wagon?” to “Good job, honey!” was a thoroughly exasperated, “Mommmmm!” My father and I laughed because in his irritable contempt, Tim sounded so much like the teen he will eventually be. And despite my amusement, that made me reflect on how soon he won’t be a child anymore. He’ll still eat large bowls of ice cream and he’ll probably still help us unload hay bales, but he won’t race Holly into the waves to retrieve a ball, or lie next to her on the beach during the fireworks, or ask me to throw a football with him.

Seeing our kids grow up is perhaps the most natural but also the most blessed part of parenting. When all goes well, we take it for granted that we will see them pass from one phase into the next, and I often express little sympathy with the mothers who say “Right now it’s really hard being up at 5 AM, but I know someday I’ll miss these days!” “You won’t,” I want to tell them. “Think that if it makes you feel better now, but you won’t. I’ve been through that part, and my kids now sleep until eight or nine in the morning if they don’t need to be up for school, and never once have I missed the 5 A.M. wakeups of their toddler days.” Not the sentimental type, I’m pretty easily convinced of the value of moving on, enjoying each stage as it arrives but then being ready to say goodbye to it.

But this weekend I found myself feeling differently. At age (‘n’ stage) eleven, Tim gets a twinkle in his eye when he’s playing on the beach or making up songs to amuse his grandparents (they and Tim have a private joke involving a jingle about Australian cleaning products that I will probably never understand, but it makes all three of them laugh). Even if his personality doesn’t change, I know some of those particular activities, that horsing-around of boys his age, will probably fade away in time.

I’ll miss it. He’ll still eat big bowls of ice cream and burn the calories off quickly, but he might not be quite so willing to serve as dance platform for his younger sister. Between his exasperated exhalations of “Mommm!” throughout the day yesterday and the way he’s resisted cutting his hair this summer, he definitely seems on his way to tweendom; he’ll turn twelve before fall officially begins. New and interesting phases lie ahead if all goes according to plan, I know. But every now and then I pause to get sentimental. Boys are so much fun at this age, and all I can do is try to hold on to the image of Tim racing Holly into the water as long as possible.