Recently I was saying goodnight to my oldest son, who is now 14 and about to enter high school. I was standing in his bedroom looking at his midnight blue walls, which are covered in each of the planets. He looked up at me from his Pottery Barn bunk bed and said, “Mom, I need a new bed … and new walls.”
I stared at him, realizing my son was no longer a child, and said hurriedly, “Of course, sure, yes, of course.” He smiled back at me with his gorgeous blue-green eyes, the shape of his father’s and the color of mine.
What he was really saying was this: Mom, I’ve grown up.
I glanced around his room. There’s a monstrous Lego Death Star on his dresser, next to an algebra book. There’s size 10 soccer cleats next to a bullet from a nerf gun. Books are piled everywhere.
As I descended the stairs, my lips trembled a bit.
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