Kiwi lemonade

On the son I do not possess

I suck at the transition from summer to not-summer. I am getting better at tackling it, enduring it, riding it out, but it’s not my time. Not here with a 14-foot skeleton (I think they’re cool, don’t get me wrong), or a pumpkin spice latte, or the cold or the long darkness. I wonder whether the spaces between posts this summer were the result of wanting to hoard the fireflies and heat lightning of my trip to my family in New York, the tiny octopus and enormous fin whales of my work trips to Kodiak. Maybe I am Frederick the mouse this year, and maybe it’s okay to wait until the darkness starts to share those stored-up bits of summer light once we’re all huddled in the hibernation cave together and the hazelnut stash starts to dwindle.

I have a senior in high school. When I say I have him, it feels like the wrong word, because I don’t really have him, in the sense of, he is not my possession. I birthed a baby, who became a child, who became a teenager, who is now a senior in high school. But I guess I will say I’ve been integral to him possessing himself.

I do not have a first day of senior year photo, just like I didn’t have a photo for the first day of junior year, sophomore year, freshman year, or eighth grade. I didn’t see him on any of those days, including today. Yep, last chance, and now it’s gone. I have some of the first day of school photos from his grade school years, and some I do not. It’s like that when your child has two households, especially when two parents are so profoundly estranged. Not that he’s my child. He’s his own person. It’s just how people always talk about children. As though there is ownership.

please accept these flowers in lieu of photos of said son

The moment during the first day of his senior year when I felt most possessive of him was when I saw the news about the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. Don’t you dare take him from me, don’t you fucking touch my son. Like parents everywhere in this country, I am not numb to school shootings, I hurt for each one, and I am selfish and want my son to make it through his senior year without ever having to experience one, though our laws contain almost nothing to rule out that possibility, for which we as a nation have no excuse.

I do have a photo of him squint-grimacing into the sunshine last Tuesday (you take these coastal forest children out from under the boughs of the forest canopy where they’ve been all summer and this is what happens), the day before senior year started, holding a fresh learner’s permit outside the local DMV, because he decided he was ready to do the thing, and then realized his mom had all the important documents he was going to need for the process. I have them; meaning, not that I own them, but that I did the legwork and paperwork and paid the necessary money to obtain them, on his behalf, in preparation for this day. And I will continue to look after them and be able to lay hands on them at a moment’s notice, until such time as he is ready to take them under his own care. A day that has not yet arrived.

And I do have a photo of him sipping his kiwi lemonade at the sushi place where I fed him lunch to celebrate having successfully joined the drivers of the world. We had delightful discussions about adulting (and the imposter syndrome that goes along with it) and how he’d feel less terrified of the DMV next time because, like Harry Potter and his patronus, he’ll know he can do it because he’s already done it. The only question he missed on the test had to do with which lights to use in fog, and as soon as he answered “high beams” he remembered it was not high beams. We decided he can use this as writing material, so Quinn’s English teacher should watch for a short story called “Fog, My Nemesis,” from him this year, possibly featuring characters we gleaned from the license plates decorating the walls of the DMV: Betsy from Oregon— specifically, wine country—and two from Nevada called Kryssy and O Mick.

I have the kiwi lemonade photo, but you do not. Have some rainbow veggies instead!

As I settled up at the sushi cash register, Quinn offered to solve the Rubik’s cube he spotted on their counter, and they accepted, and then when it was solved, I saw him do one more swivel sequence of the cube before righting it once more.

“You put the Rubik’s emblem right-side up, didn’t you?” I accused.

“Well, yeah, it’s a courtesy!” he said.

“How many people would notice it though?”

“Almost no one would notice it. Okay, maybe only me. I’m neurodivergent! And it bothers me if it’s not oriented correctly. That’s why I invented that sequence in the first place!”

I think my favorite thing about my endeavor to never believe I owned “my” son is that he owns himself so securely. He knows himself, likes himself, chooses among his extensive vocabulary to describe who he is, and embraces the whole package. And so do I.