Peculiar and hilarious: My weekend with three 12-year-old boys

I used to always end Tim’s birthday parties with a sense of triumph. I survived, the house survived, and the kids had fun, I would tell myself with a rush of relief as each one ended. The farm party; the cupcake-decorating party; the outing to the minor league baseball park; the sleepover party; the miniature golf excursion; the day at the theme park. All were great birthday celebrations as far as Tim was concerned because he had so much fun; all were great from my perspective because, well, they ended with no one getting hurt. And sometimes they were kind of fun for me too. But more often than not, it was just a relief to know I’d pulled it off.

This year I ended Tim’s birthday party not with a sense of triumph but with a minor sense of sadness. It wasn’t that the gathering hadn’t been successful. It was just that for the first time in 12 years of hosting birthday parties for Tim and his peers, I didn’t want to see this one end.

I suspected that taking three 12-year-old boys up to Maine for the weekend just days before Tim turned 13 would work out pretty well, but I didn’t anticipate what a good time I would have. Partly it was great because the mom of one of the other guests came along too, and she and I had lots of time to talk and visit throughout the weekend, but it was also just that the boys were really fun to be with. Peculiar and hilarious at times, but fun.

Peculiar and hilarious in that any mildly interesting thing any of them managed to do – such as climbing a medium-sized tree, eating an order of fried clams or crossing a street backwards – involved not only the activity itself but the necessity of one of the other boys whipping out a cell phone, taking a picture of the endeavor, and then emailing it to ten or fifteen friends. Peculiar and hilarious in that much of the weekend unfolded in tandem with a continuous text-message conversation going back and forth with a group of girls from their class at school who were having a get-together of their own at the same time. Peculiar and hilarious in that when walking down a somewhat busy city street, 12-year-old boys tend to draw upon the rules of bumper cars more than of pedestrians – caroming off of other people as you tear along is fine as long as you don’t actually initiate any head-on crashes.

But really, what will stay in my mind about the weekend isn’t so much the many ways that 12-year-old boys are different from 44-year-old moms – such as when a formal wedding party arrived by boat at the dock adjacent to our balcony and while my friend and I, along with several neighbors who were watching from their own balconies, oohed and aahed over the pretty bride and her elegant dress, the boys expressed disappointment at what a smooth landing the captain of the boat made, even with a photographer standing right in his line of sight, because, of course, it would have been so much cooler if the wedding party had crash-landed at the dock – not any of that is what will stay in my mind as much as how much fun we all had. We took a long walk along the bike path to the beach. We ate mussels and calamari. We visited the ice cream parlor. We went on a 90-minute kayaking excursion on the Harraseeket River. We played badminton.

I wish I could say this birthday must be the beginning of a long string of parties at which I’ll have just as good a time as the kids, but this may have been a one-off. If I could turn back the clock to Friday, I’d do it all again, just because it was so much fun. But of course, I have to move past the weekend and into a new work week, just as the kids do back at school. Thanks to them, though, there are two or three hundred cell-phone photos of our fun now floating through cyber-space, so I can revisit the experience as often as I want.

Tim at the helm

Up in Maine over the weekend, I had my first opportunity of the year to go boating.

I enjoy boating but certainly don’t yearn for it; but for my 12-year-old, piloting a powerboat ranks right up there as probably one of his top three or four favorite things in life. In fact, during the weekend he mentioned that the Saturday a year ago when he boated all morning and went to an all-you-can-eat lobster picnic in the evening was “the best day of my life.”

This year, the two events were divided over two days: the annual lobster roll buffet took place on Saturday, but we didn’t have the chance to go boating until Sunday. My mother pointed out that the two activities were close enough that Tim could still construe it as the best 24 hours of his life even if it wasn’t technically all one day, but Tim responded that “Grandma, it doesn’t work like that.”

The fact that Tim loves boating so much makes it all the more fun for me, because it’s such a pleasure for me to see the level of engagement he shows when he has the opportunity to get out on the water. Under my father’s expert supervision, Tim plays close attention. He takes criticism well when he does things wrong, because he understands the high stakes where personal safety as well as the soundness of the boat are concerned. He takes pride in his nautical abilities, but he doesn’t rest on his laurels; he works hard to improve. With every ride, he gains more confidence and more skill.

It’s also teaching him to deal with obstacles and apprehensions. Yesterday, for the first part of the ride, he was anxious about the many larger boats in the vicinity and the wakes they were causing. “Oh, crap,” he said as each new set of waves from a passing boat hit us, until my father pointed out to him that “Oh, crap” wasn’t actually a nautical term. At that point he realized he was handing the wakes fairly well, and stopped fretting over each new one.

Another reason I appreciate Tim’s interest in boating is that he readily accepts the grunt work that goes along with the fun. At home, he has to be reminded to put dirty glasses in the sink and throw his clothes into the hamper, but with the boat, he’s always ready for the work that the sport entails. He knows the whole checklist he needs to run through before and after the ride, from snapping and unsnapping the canvas covers to putting away life vests, bumpers and ropes in their designated compartments.

It’s always a positive experience for parents to witness their kids engaged in something the kids truly love. I feel this way when I watch Tim play baseball as well, but baseball isn’t as much work as boating. What I appreciate when I see him on the boat is his grasp of the fact that most activities to which one wants to commit oneself include hard work, learning and concentration along with the fun. (Eating lobster rolls, of course, involves none of those extra elements, and he did plenty of that over the weekend as well.) Seeing how thoroughly he commits himself to becoming an ever better boater reassures me that he has the aptitude to learn and accomplish all kinds of things.

Tim playing baseball

It’s what you might call an open secret that I don’t show up at too many of Tim’s baseball games. Even before Holly wrote an acrostic for Mothers’ Day and used the phrase “Not good at committing to watch Tim’s baseball games” for the very first letter in my name, I was a no-show more often than not.

It just doesn’t seem essential to me to appear at every game. Since Rick is Tim’s coach, Tim is always assured of one parent at the game. And I’ve never really bought into the cliché of “never missed a baseball game” (or soccer match or dance recital or skating competition) as the hallmark of an attentive parent. I go to some of the games, and I ask Tim to tell me about the ones I miss. He doesn’t read every article I write; I trust him to understand that I care and am interested in what he’s doing even if I don’t stand on the sidelines at every game.

But last Saturday I did get to the game, and it was the All-Star match-up, and it reminded me of what a joy it can be for a parent to watch a child do something for which the child has slowly and painstakingly acquired skills and honed talent. On the baseball diamond, Tim is strong, effective, sure-footed and confident; moreover, he’s happy and has fun. He was on the All-Star team but he’s not a star; he’s a good player among many good players, and that’s how he sees himself as well.

At the age of 12, the boys are no longer playing a kiddie version of the game. They pitch hard, run fast, swing the bat with considerable might and connect bat with ball a reasonable percentage of the time. Off the field, we parents reassure the parents of the younger kids still playing t-ball or in their first year of player-pitching rather than coach-pitching that the games really will get more bearable and move faster eventually. We try not to boast that our kids are at the point where it’s like watching, well, a real baseball game.

Seeing how graceful Tim is on the field reminds me all over again of that strange progression of parenthood, how when your child is young you have control over almost everything related to him: what he eats, what books he reads, who he meets, where he goes, even to some extent what images cross his field of vision. As a result, for a time he knows and experiences nothing beyond what you know and experience. And that gradually your scope of control lessens: he goes to school, meets people you don’t know, hears stories you’ve never read, learns about the Ice Age and the Iditarod and topics you’ve never thought about much at all.

And accordingly, he then develops abilities you didn’t instill. As an athlete, Tim surpassed me before he turned seven. Now, on the baseball field, he can execute moves I don’t even know exist. He’s in his own universe out there, one that hardly overlaps with mine at all. But getting myself to a game is one way to be part of this new universe, and although I don’t feel guilty about the games I miss, I’m full of delight when I do get there to watch him.

On Saturday, Tim’s team lost, and he didn’t have any spectacular at-bats or score any points for his team. But at one moment in the sixth inning, he was in the outfield when a member of the opposing team clouted the ball; it was the best hit of the game. Tim sprang after it and fielded the ball. The batter got to third base, which he certainly deserved after such a show-stopping hit, but Tim threw to the infield in time to prevent him from getting farther. Behind me, a parent I didn’t recognize who was rooting for the other team muttered with audible disappointment, “If anyone other than Tim West had been in the outfield on that play, it would have been a home run.”

This wasn’t a headline moment for Tim, but in a way, that underhanded and unintended praise for him gave the whole experience resonance for me. Tim’s team lost, but he played the strong solid game for which he apparently already has a reputation. And I was happy to be there for it.

Not-quite-full house

Tim was thrilled with the plan for his friend Austin’s 12th birthday party on Saturday night: laser tag at a nearby entertainment facility, pizza and ice cream for dinner, flashlight tag in the yard after dinner, and then hunkering down in sleeping bags with a bunch of his favorite guys. Past experience caused him to suspect waffles and bacon would likely appear at breakfast time, too.

So I can’t use any apprehensions on Tim’s part as an excuse for my own edginess as I locked up our house before going to bed on Saturday. I always get a little edgy when either of the kids is away for the night, even though I tell myself I shouldn’t.

Tim wasn’t far away, and he was in a house I knew well with a family I knew well. He was just as safe and sound there as at home, and I’m not by nature a worrier anyway. Besides, I love the idea of sleepovers. I have so many happy memories of sleepovers with friends from my own childhood. I should celebrate Tim’s opportunity to do this.

And yet when one family member is out of the house for the night, things just don’t feel quite right.

It’s a little hypocritical of me, because in theory I love the idea of the kids going off to do things without us. Not because I want to be rid of them but because I want them to have that kind of life, one replete with outside influences and opportunities to try different options. Growing up, even without traveling far I learned so much about diversity on the most granular level by spending time with families other than my own: families I babysat for, friends’ families, even relatives. I like it when my kids come home from sleepovers with interesting observations about a household practice or tradition different from our own.

But at the same time, it unnerves me just a little when I don’t know where they are or how they are doing. Walking past their empty bedrooms at night gives me a pang of anxiety: why aren’t they here at home in bed? Well, because they’re sleeping somewhere else for one night. And there’s really nothing wrong with that. Some parents whose children cannot experience simple joys like sleepovers, for any of a variety of reasons, yearn for the pleasure of knowing their child has been invited to a slumber party.

So I try to suppress my mild anxiety as I lock the front door and check that the oven is off. Barring unforeseen problems, Tim will be home in the morning, happy and tired, brimming with tales of the party but also glad to be home. I’ll be glad to have him home, too. Seeing your children head out for a night or two is a positive thing, but welcoming them home is even better, and it’s wonderful to know that chances are, all four of us will go to sleep under the same roof tonight.

The bus-stop walk

Our new bus stop is exactly a half-mile from our house, only a small distance farther than our old bus stop was. Tim knew my expectation with the old bus drop-off was that he would walk it without complaint, though if it was raining or snowing or below about thirty degrees – all of which were frequent occurrences this past winter – I usually drove out to pick him up.

From the new bus stop, my expectations are the same, but after a week with a lot of rainy days followed by a week in which he was sick, Tim seemed to fall out of the habit of walking uncomplainingly. Most days this month he has called me from the bus to ask if I’ll come out and get him.

Typically, my response is the same as it used to be when he would do this: if it’s not raining or snowing or cold, I tell him to walk. End of discussion.

But within the past week or so, I realized that although there was no reason he needed to be picked up at the bus stop in the car, it wasn’t a bad time for me to take a break from my work, and it wasn’t a bad chance to get the dog moving around a little bit too. She and I do our run together first thing in the morning; by 2:30 it often feels like we’ve been sitting still for hours and hours. (Often, we have.)

So for the past few days, I’ve tried to resist the temptation to tell him I’m too busy with work when he calls. Instead, I grab Belle’s leash and head out to meet him on foot.

I expected him to be discontent with this solution. I thought what he really wanted was a ride. I thought his call was mostly about wanting to avoid the half-mile walk.

But I came to realize in the past few days that I might be wrong about that. He seems to be delighted to see me walking out to meet him as he makes his way down the road. (I never actually start my walk early enough to see him get off the bus; he’s always already on his way by the time our paths cross.) And I don’t know why this should surprise me, but it does. I’m just not used to thinking that Tim really wants my company. For so long now, it’s seemed to be the rule that he likes being with me at baseball games and mealtimes and bike rides, but quiet strolls together aren’t particularly a priority. But without my even noticing, that seems to have changed. Ever since I started walking out to the bus, he seems happy just for the chance to walk with me.

What made me take notice of this transformation was that late last week when he called from the bus, he had a specific request. “Mom, could you either walk out to meet me at the bus stop or cook me some bacon for a snack?” he asked. Bacon isn’t an everyday thing, but once a week or so I’m willing to allow it.

“Sure,” I said. “Which would you prefer I do?”

I was sure he’d say the bacon, partly because he loves bacon so much and partly because he’s too lazy to fix his own snack.

He didn’t even seem to pause. “Walk out to meet me,” he answered. “I can make the bacon myself.”

I have to confess, I was irrationally flattered. But this is really interesting to me. For so long, it seemed that my purpose to Tim was based on the primal components that mothers provide to children: sustenance and comfort initially, entertainment and transportation and nourishment as they get older. But by Tim asking me to walk with him, I’m discovering that even when he needs none of these things, he values my company.

I don’t want to make more of this than it is. For one thing, at the old bus stop he had two neighbors to walk with; here there are no other kids on his bus shift. It might not be me in particular, just that he’d rather have company than walk alone.

But still, my company trumped bacon. At the moment, I can’t think of anything more validating than that.

This too shall pass, Tim

It was a bad time for Tim as this month began, at least bad within his personal frame of reference. He had a fever for four days and missed the overnight class trip. After four days of feeling crummy, he finally felt much better but had to stay home from school anyway per the doctor’s orders, so on that fifth day he was bored silly and frustrated by the awareness that all his friends were back from the trip and having fun at school without him. Last Monday, he was finally able to return to school, which was great – but then Tuesday, as had been planned weeks ago, it was off to the orthodontist to have braces put on.

I was so relieved to finally have Tim’s long-anticipated orthodontic treatment under way that I hadn’t given much thought to how it would actually feel to him. I don’t think he necessarily had, either – given the propensity of kids his age to live in the moment – and I suppose the fact that about fifty percent of his sixth grade class already has braces made both of us see it as an everyday thing.

In fact, I have to confess that I was looking forward to that first braces-installation appointment a little bit. These days, I look forward to anything that involves sitting in a waiting room with nothing much to do. Waiting at the airport for a flight to depart. Taking the car to Jiffy Lube. The kids’ haircuts. The Registry of Motor Vehicles. I’ve come to treasure those rare places where so little is expected of me other than sitting and waiting. Knowing Tim’s appointment would last a couple of hours, I knew I could catch up on a whole weekend of newspapers.

Besides that, Tim’s orthodontist’s office is a unique place to sit and wait. I think of it as the Disney World of medical practices. Every single employee I’ve ever met there is friendly, cheerful, and articulate. The waiting room has a coffee station for parents and Xbox video games for kids. Standard giveaways for patients include t-shirts, movie nights and water park excursions. I settled down happily with my laptop, logged on to the Internet via the office’s free wireless access, and waved Tim off as he headed to the dentist’s chair.

Two hours later, I realized my expectations had been a bit glib. I had one miserable boy on my hands. His teeth didn’t hurt, he told me as I repeatedly asked; he just felt so uncomfortable with wire laced throughout his mouth. The idea of eating anything didn’t appeal to him at all, and he spent an unhappy afternoon back at home.

Later that day he contemplated a bowl of oatmeal and his eyes welled up. “I’m going to eat oatmeal for the next two years?” he wailed.

In those few words, I saw the problem. He was assuming the way he felt at that moment, that hour, that whole day even, was how things would be for as long as he had braces. Even after twelve years of life, he hadn’t yet truly assimilated the transitory nature of time, the awareness that feeling bad, no matter what form it takes, doesn’t mean you won’t soon feel better.

“No, not for the next two years!” I told him. “You’ll be ready to eat regular food soon! You’ll get used to the braces. You’ll feel better.” After all, I pointed out, his friend Austin had been in braces for months, and did Tim ever hear him complain about how miserable a situation it was? Of course not, because the misery passes.

But, as most adults know, easy to say; sometimes harder to believe. When Tim was an infant, I never believed he’d someday sleep more than two hours at a time. When he was a toddler, I never believed he would someday talk. When Holly refused to give up crawling long after her first birthday, I feared she’d never walk. It wasn’t that I had unreasonable concerns about my kids’ development; it was just hard for me to remember that every stage passes, just as Tim was having trouble believing the initial discomfort of braces wouldn’t last for the full two years he was scheduled to wear them.

But it did pass, of course. A week later, he already feels normal in braces. He’s learning to brush his teeth carefully and avoid eating meat off the bone. He’s ready to reassure those friends who haven’t yet started their orthodontic treatment that it’s really no big deal. Oatmeal for the first day or two, he tells them, and then you’ll be fine.

So I hope it’s a lesson he’ll transfer to other situations: discomfort, pain and unhappiness pass. (So do tranquility, elation and triumph, of course, but no need to rush that lesson.) Braces was one way to discover that, and I’m sure it’s something he’ll continue learning, just as I continue learning it still. This is a start, though, and I can only hope he’ll long remember that two days after getting his braces on, he started feeling better.

Tween time

Tim is singing at the top of his lungs in Spanish.

I’m not sure why. I’m not sure why he’s singing; I’m not sure why he’s singing in Spanish as opposed to English; I’m not sure why he’s singing so loud.

But he’s a pre-teen – and in less than six months, he’ll be a full-fledged teen, no more “pre” about it – and I’m discovering that it turns out we in fact will not be the one household that avoids dealing with adolescent mood swings. We’ll be like all the other households with 12- or 13- or 14-year-olds, trying to figure out why our child is jubilant one minute and catatonic the next; refusing to put the sweatshirt he’s worn for the past six days in the laundry while also taking daily showers these days, whereas up ‘til last month it was a struggle to get him to wash more than once or twice a week.

I suspect mood swings are more difficult for other parents to take than for me, and I say that not because I’m a more patient or tolerant parent but because for us, there’s an unexpected up side. As a younger child, Tim had steady moods, but they tended to be on the somewhat subdued side. He was almost never jubilant, unless it was at the end of a victorious baseball game or coming home from the circus. These days he emanates jolliness and good cheer at the strangest times: getting off the bus on a Tuesday afternoon, for example, or leaving the supermarket with me. There are the bleaker moods as well, particularly in the morning over breakfast when he doesn’t want to begin the new day just yet, but I’m used to those. It’s the bounciness that’s a novelty to me.

So if the past few weeks have been any indication, we’re in luck with our nearly-teen. He’s happy with everything that being almost 13 entails: middle school, with its classes seriously focused on academic progress; school dances; even the local cultural events I’ve been dragging him to for years suddenly appeal to him if it means he can sit with his friends. What’s more, he’s almost always pleasant and polite to me these days (other than during those early-morning breakfasts), in part because he is so often requesting permission to use my computer so that he can instant-message with his friends.

We still have another child to squire through the pre-teen years, and she’s the one who has been blessed with a sunny disposition since birth, so the tables might turn. Fair is fair; I’m afraid we’re owed a stormy adolescence somewhere along the way. But right now we’re enjoying the ride: daily showers, text messaging, study sessions at the library, and everything else that it unexpectedly encompasses so far.

A 12-year-old takes flight

Since winter is currently the only season that my 12-year-old does not participate in a baseball league, this is typically hibernation time for him, since he’s never been a joiner in any of the other extracurricular activities that some of his classmates enjoy: Boy Scouts, chess club, symphonic band. Tim’s interests are narrowly focused, Much as I may wish it were not the case, and he savors afterschool time without structure.

So I was pleasantly surprised when he mentioned that he was interested in taking an afterschool class this winter that he’d heard other middle schoolers talking about: flight simulation class. It’s offered as part of our school’s Science/ Technology/ Engineering/ Math (STEM) enrichment program and involves a local dad in town who is a licensed pilot setting up flight simulators in the library and teaching kids about the mechanics and physics of flight.

Needless to say, this offering is a big hit with the middle school boys, though I’m sure girls have signed up as well at some point. I was delighted to sign Tim up; it was encouraging to see him developing an interest in something other than sports and fantasy fiction about knights and quests, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But I found it hard to say “Tim’s taking a flight class” with a straight face, even though I knew how politically incorrect the joke was: the whole idea of a flight class reminded me of the September 11th hijackers and the flight instructors from the Midwest who later told investigators that no, they did not see anything unusual about men who specified that they needed to learn only how to fly horizontally and not to take off or land. (Related to that, when I was first getting to know my friend Patricia, whose husband is a licensed pilot and frequently flies their family of four around the country, I was surprised that she had no interest in learning about flying. “What if he has a heart attack at the controls?” I asked her. “Shouldn’t you at least take a class in how to land a plane? Hey, maybe you could split tuition with hijackers-in-training: you can do the takeoff and landing classes and let them take the sessions in the middle.” As I said, I acknowledge how tasteless all of this is.)

In any case, Tim is caught up in the excitement of learning to use flight simulator software, and it seems to me like an ideal antidote for a twelve-year-old with cabin fever. The class meets twice a week; he climbs into the car after each meeting to tell me about which simulated flight path they attempted, which national or regional airport he “landed” at, and what new details he learned about the physics and engineering underlying the basic principles of aviation. My child may be somewhat self-restricted in his interests -- at this rate, he’ll never earn the label of Renaissance man – but that only makes it all the more exciting when something captures his imagination.

When my children were little, I felt like I knew everything about their interests simply by watching them play. Now that they are older, I sometimes wish I had more direction over what they devote their time to. I’m sorry that Tim gave up trumpet lessons this year, and I’m really hoping he’ll agree to sign up for the social dance program that starts next month. As for flight simulation class, all tasteless jokes aside, I’m not sure whether I would have chosen it for him, but I certainly don’t oppose it. I’m happy to see him learning a new skill. Besides, it could come in really handy if he ever goes on a flight with my friend Patricia and her husband.

Tim turns twelve

Tim turned twelve years old yesterday. It is always such a joy to me to celebrate the kids’ birthdays with them. I feel such a sense of accomplishment on their behalf as I watch them reach each new age. It’s not that the birthday itself is an accomplishment, of course; just that it’s such a convenient time to note what’s changed in the past year.

What’s changed for Tim is that he’s grown a lot taller – still wiry as ever – and his facial structure is stronger in appearance, solid bones emerging to define his features. What else has changed is that he grows increasingly confident as a student, as a baseball player, and in my opinion as a mensch. He seems to try to be a good friend to people and expect them to like him in turn. When he was younger, I found him to be somewhat defensive around new peers – as if always expecting them to break his toys – but these days I think he takes a much more circumspect view. In just one week of school so far this year, he’s mentioned two different boys who are new to town and whom he already likes, and I sense that he is learning to appreciate and take an interest in new people rather than viewing them suspiciously. This is a great change, as far as I’m concerned.

Other characteristics of Tim at twelve: he can get lost in a book, just as I used to do – immersed to the point that he doesn’t hear conversation directed at him. He’s a willing and increasingly capable boat captain. I can rely on him for navigational help in the car and for judgment on practical matters. He loves baseball enough to play three seasons a year: not just being at bat or on the pitcher’s mound but even sitting on the bench watching his teammates. He just loves being part of the sport, whether they’re winning or losing, fielding or batting, playing or resting. He tries hard to be a patient and caring older brother, though admittedly those efforts vary in their success rate.

There were only two things he wanted for birthday presents this year, he told us: a text package added to his cell phone (we gave him the phone last year as a hand-me-down, not because it was something he cared much about having but because in fifth grade he started walking or biking home from school sometimes and it was helpful to be in touch); and a waffle iron.

We added the text package over the weekend, and already Tim has used it to become more responsible if also a little more demanding. “Please put a bagel in the toaster for me,” he texts me from the end of the driveway as he gets off the bus. Still, when I texted back asking him to close the pasture gate so that I wouldn’t have to head out later in the afternoon to do it, he closed it even before coming inside for the bagel. So the texting has potential to benefit all of us.

Holly heard Tim’s second wish and asked me if I would buy a waffle iron for her to give him. She and I together stopped in the housewares section at Sears last weekend to pick one out. “I am not giving you a waffle iron,” she told him a dozen or so times in the ensuing days, determined with utter lack of subtlety to be sure this present was a surprise. I’m not so sure it was a surprise, but Tim was definitely happy with it. I don’t know where his obsession for learning to make waffles came from, but I’m willing to give it a try.

In a hundred different ways, he is such a different person from the seven-pound baby I balanced in the crook of my arm for the first time twelve years ago last night. In other ways, not. Traits that emerged in infancy and maintain themselves on the crest of the teenage years include his capacity for stubbornness, his tendency toward introversion, his adoration of Rick, his understated but persistent affection for me.

Most of us parents love our babies from the moment we first see them, and I was no different. But it was so different twelve years ago from how it is now. Then, I loved the very fact of his existence. Now, I love everything about who he is turning out to be. And I feel very, very grateful for the best twelve years, and hopeful that many more equally fascinating, rewarding, and yes, occasionally frustrating, years lie ahead.