My Son

I'm so lucky. I have a son that is amazing in every capacity...seriously...I know every Mom thinks that of their son, but it's actually true for me.

He's handsome...or at least I'm told constantly by my daughters' friends that he is, to me he looks like my cuddly 4 year old boy.

He's caring...a few weeks ago I was reminded of how caring he is while watching him be the first to jump up, take off his headphones and stop what he was doing, when his team mate tapped out during a match. Turned out the poor guy had broken his kneecap. 2 days later Boy Teenager went out in -40* air to go visit that friend, just to check up on him at home. When I said, "You 2 must be really good friends." He looked at me funny & said, "We're teammates." That was all he had to say, because there was a lot of emotion in those words.

He's sweet...last Saturday, during a break between matches, I watched him roll around on the mat, pretending to let his coach's 2 year old son pin him. He "wrestled" with that little kid, going into all sorts of positions, being sat on, having his legs lifted in the air, having the little guy sprawled across his neck. It was adorable. The whole team & about half of everyone in the stands ended up watching that little match for the 10 minutes it lasted instead of the match that was going on on the other side of the gym. There were many laughs as Boy Teenager fell down face first, arms & legs sprawled out, & didn't move as an intent, growling 2 year old pushed on his waist & then laid across his back as the victor. The best part? Boy Teenager had no idea that he had an audience. He didn't do it for attention, he did it 'cause he was letting that little guy feel like one of the big guys. And it's not the only time he's done it.

He's got ethics, a great moral compass, & he's driven by his goals. And let's not forget that he's far from lazy & he knows how to treat people.

It's no secret that Boy Teenager has me wrapped around his finger. He knows it, though he'll deny it. All he has to do is look at me with those big brown eyes & raised eyebrows & I tell him where I've hidden the Twix bars or give him the last piece of cheesecake.

Sometimes the guy can tick me off. Even with a genius IQ, he can do and say stupid stuff that makes me worry for when he's out in the real world on his own. Which could be sooner than I was prepared for, because he's able to graduate a year early. While I'll support whichever decision he makes about it, I wait until I'm all alone late at night to cry at the thought of him doing it. That means he'd walk with his sister's class & I would be sending both Amazing Grace & Boy Teenager off to college...4 hours away for both of them, in opposite directions...at the same time. To say I'm not prepared for this is a major understatement. I don't even know how to deal with the thought of it, so how am I supposed to manage actually doing it when the time comes?

My boy is a science & math genius. He also thinks they're amazingly fun and enjoyable. I'm good at both, obviously, or I wouldn't have made it into nursing school, but I don't find math to be the amazingly, absurdly enjoyable fun that Boy Teenager does. I am often the unwilling audience to a conversation between Boy Teenager & the hubby man on various math topics, like the joy of calculus. Those conversations end up being full of smiles and excitement that I thought was only reserved for straight guys seeing boobs.

My husband & my son are such math geeks, it's amazing that Boy Teenager isn't his biological son. They're awfully lot alike.

Back to me & why I'm so lucky.

I was sitting in My Dungeon aka behind the closed hall door, behind my closed bedroom door, music on, in front of the laptop, studying. So I was in My Dungeon all day on Sunday. It was oh so fun. Yeah, right.

All of a sudden, out of the blue, Boy Teenager came through the first of My Dungeon's doors & knocked on the second one. "Mom?"

"Yeah, bud, come on in."

When I'm in My Dungeon, everyone knows that I'm off limits unless it's dire. I've had to learn how important it is for me to be off limits as well as they have, because I've always been the one to answer their unending questions and find their unfound items. If a child knocks on my bedroom door, I know there's a good reason.

"You want some help?"

I slowly turned from my desk to look at Boy Teenager. "Sorry. What?" There was no way I heard that correctly.

He repeated it. Wow, that is what he said.

"Uh...um...you want to help me?" I couldn't help but ask. This is the boy who grunts his "I love you" so that it comes out as "yuhyoudoo" all one word & sighs when I ask him anything much too personal like how his neck injury is feeling. He'll hold a conversation with me if he's the one to initiate it, which does happen on a daily basis, but if I dare to try to have a conversation I get grunts. He's helpful around the house, does his jobs without sighing or complaining (cuz Mama don't tolerate that), but Moms aren't cool to the average just-about-to-be-16 year old boy.

"Yeah. What are you working on?" He said, looking at me like I'd suddenly started speaking in Not Cool. Getting it together so as to not be more Not Cool & scare him away, I told him what oh so fun part of college algebra I was partaking in. He sat down next to me, watched my lecture videos with me, & paused the video when he saw me hesitating in my note writing. He took the time to explain things in a different way to help me understand, being patient with me & using different techniques until I completely got it.

Then he stayed in my room, throwing algebraic equations at me for the next 2 hours, until I felt comfortable with all of it. He didn't get frustrated like I thought he would. He didn't get tired of my questions. And he's a darn strict tutor 'cause the dude wouldn't listen to me whining, "I don't need more practice." All I'd get back was, "Mom. I don't care. You're doing it." The boy drilled it into my head.

He didn't have to do all of that. He didn't have to sit through me studying or give me problem after problem until I could have done them in my sleep.

I got 100% on the test that was full of the problems that he'd been drilling into my head.

The pin that Boy Teenager handed
me when my name was announced
at Parent Recognition Night
for wrestling. 

I'm so proud of that particular 100% because it represents something to me. That A represents how amazing my son is. I was not prepared for that test before he came to help me. There were parts that just weren't making sense for me & I was sure my straight-A status was about to be dropped down a few grades for it. My son was a big help in making sure that didn't happen. I did the work for that grade, but he took the time to make sure I was prepared to do that work.

That's my boy.

When I saw my grade, I saw how much my son cares about me. He doesn't always show it in ways that...well...he doesn't always show it to me. I'm just Mom.

I got a peek into how much he actually does care about me because he gave up 2 hours of his own time, time he could have been playing his computer game or talking to the girls texting or Snapchatting him, just for me. Without being told to do it by his step-father.