A Letter to My Seven-Year-Old Son

January 17, 2014

Dear Son,

I remember when you first entered my life. I spent hours holding you close, smelling your head, and gazing into your eyes. I lived for your smiles; even the gas-induced ones brought me joy.

Seven years later, not much has changed.

I still love the way your head fits perfectly between my chin and collarbone, though the sight of your legs extending beyond the couch sometimes makes me sad. I still love to breathe in the scent of your hair. Not necessarily after a soccer game, but when you are fresh from the bath. Your smiles—even the fart-joke induced ones—still bring me joy.

I don’t spend as much time gazing in your eyes as I used to. Your eyes have always been expressive. I see the world in them. Lately, I see the weight of the world in them. The apprehension in your seven-year-old eyes makes it hard to look at them for long. Your eyes are full of questions. What if you fail? How much is enough? When is the right time? I see you looking to me for answers, but I don’t have answers to give. The answers used to be easy. When you were younger, it was a multiple choice test every time you cried: milk, sleep, or clean diaper. Now the questions and answers are more complicated.

I remember your milestones. Learning to sit. Learning to stand. Learning to walk and talk. I checked the boxes on those easy-to-define achievements. I even charted your pre-milestone progress. I used to sit you upright and count how many seconds it took for you to tip over. Of course, that was proof not of your progress toward independent sitting but of the existence of gravity in our living room. Nevertheless, I soaked it all in and my new mom heart swelled with pride and relief as the evidence mounted that you were gaining the skills you needed to survive in this world.

The milestones from here are less defined. There are no checklists.

It’s no longer about knowing how to sit or stand, but when to sit or stand. Courtesy—easing another’s burden, putting some else’s comfort ahead of your own, offering a small kindness, showing that you see others and deem them to be of value—is a gift the world needs. You need to know when to offer your seat to another. But the rules for doing so are not based on a simple algorithm of gender and age. They are complicated. You need to know when offering your seat would wound fragile pride. You need to watch for situations where a person’s need to be perceived as capable exceeds the need for comfort. It’s tricky.

It’s no longer about knowing how to walk, but where to walk. Someday, you will sit in class and your teacher will introduce you to Robert Frost’s poem about two roads diverging in a yellow wood. Your teacher will tell you that what Frost wrote is true. Our choices matter. You will think you understand. It will be my job to tell you that Frost was writing about the best case scenario. Life’s intersections are rarely simple forks in the road with two defined choices. Life’s intersections are crowded and the road less travelled is overgrown and easy to miss. Choices don’t announce themselves. Defining moments camouflage themselves in our daily routine. Seemingly small choices are turns: to smile or not, to speak or stay silent, to stay within or stray from your comfort zone, today or tomorrow.

It’s no longer about knowing how to talk, but which words to use. Words have power and must be used wisely. They have the power to hurt and the power to heal, although those powers are not equal. The hurt caused by words is rarely able to be healed by words. Even sincere apologies can’t fully erase the damage. The best an apology can do is ice the swelling. Apologizing for hurtful words is like painting over graffiti. The new paint never quite matches the original color; the shadow of the vandalism remains.

There are so many milestones to come: wisdom, courage, discernment and more. None of these have clear metrics to let you know when you’ve arrived. But, you will make progress if you practice. Like a baby taking ten seconds to tip over instead of four, you will slowly learn. You will learn which battles are worth fighting and which are best served by pacifism. You will learn which risks are likely to yield rewards and which are simply an excuse for an adrenaline rush.

You will learn so much in the years to come. Trial and error will be your greatest teacher. You will be bruised. You will be scraped. You will get bumps that swell to an alarming size. That’s part of the growing. Skinned knees mean you’re doing it right.

Along the way, you will look to me for answers. I might not have them.

But, I still want to hear the questions.

Love,

Mom

Photo by Benton J. Melbourne

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