My newly 18 year old son told me:
“Your birthday letter made me feel better, maybe it’ll make other people feel better too.” So, here it is
“You are now a young, sapling of a man, but a man just the same. It is something to get used to, as all changes are, and you will. We will. As you are constructing this new, older, man self, here are a few things your momma would like you to know.
It can seem surreal that a completely invisible threshold has been somehow passed over. That can make you feel concerned that you’ve missed some important map of directions along the way.
I promise you that this confusion is a part of the process. Something that bonds you with most other people in its deeply common experience. Most people feel floppy and weird when it’s called out in the waiting room of life and they look to the left and then to the right before realizing that the name ADULT was both used AND actually meant for them.
My father said to me once, when I felt that floppy: “Most people are not like Mozart, knowing from the time he was 4 that all he wanted was to write and play music.”
I remember feeling even floppier after that.
Why WASN’T I like Mozart?
He had clarity from the age of FOUR??
What the actual hell? THAT seemed like a life-route I could actually get down with.
I don’t have any insight as to how to soothe you if you feel the same.
I did learn that Mozart was deeply unhappy a good chunk of his life and died young, as if he had accomplished all of his life’s early goals, fast and, well, early.
And after having kids I remember sitting in a gymnasium at the Chicago Waldorf School for a parent orientation hearing a very thoughtful speech that made me consider about how we think, as parents – that we think we want to raise Henry Fords and MLKs, Beethovens and Mozarts but actually we might want to consider letting the spectacular we are gunning for simply reside in a thoughtful, caring, open life.
To grow our children nourished and curious and loved…
The Spectacular coming and going as it will because of the beauty that just is, here and there.
Along with the everything else.
Life is a mixture of The Good and The Great and The Wow is THAT a tough challenge. Sometimes daily.
The Spectacular lives in the neighborhood and it has a massive after-party going on that you get invited to here and there. You LOVE the invitations but feel like shittola the next morning if you are constantly lining up to get into the ever-loud houseparty.
But you should go sometimes, when you feel like dancing.
And I hope you do dance, hard.
But without the white man’s overbite.
And then I hope you eat a thoughtful breakfast or lunch. (let’s get real – it’ll be brunch at the earliest)
Walk or bike for grounding your body in movement and natural being.
Read something interesting to expand your mind.
Drink some water.
And get to what it is that really matters to you.
Your adultness is beginning now, it is true. But the adventure has just begun.
Let it be all the layers that every adventure is.
The initial inherent confusion…
The known and unknown.
The surprising and the mundane.
The cold and wet, the warm and dry.
The funny as hell and the distinctly not funny.
Which is often, in its shittiest parts, funny still.
The huge gains and stunning-shock-bolts of loss.
The building and the crumbling.
The busy and the bored.
The bored busy that is trying to tell you something about your choices.
The people that create a world with you and those that crush your entire universe.
The absolute knowing and the absolute knowing that no one is knowing.
Anything.
The stunned wonder that YOU get to have THE THING.
Learning what that thing actually is, now that you have it.
Connecting easily and totally over-trying to connect.
Disappointing yourself and others you can’t stand disappointing.
Falling back into the unmade bed of forgiveness.
Sitting down when you should stand.
Learning to stand on one hand like a MOFO.
The wobble stand that is braver than the chest out stand you can usually manage.
Leaving and being left.
Meeting and feeling met.
High-fiving your own danged self – and giving others the idea to do the same.
Gifting yourself the thing you’ve only gifted others.
Bright bursts of insights that sear your seeing.
The knife fights that you brought the right blade to and the ones where you are caught eating with a spork.
The crazy current you thought was no big deal, and now you are in it.
The warm towel from the washer/dryer set of human kindness.
The cringe you avoid and seem to invite.
Food so beautiful you wonder who gets to have such nourishment, only to realize it is on a plate for YOU.
Waiting for thunderbolts of certainty.
Getting a few of those THUNDERBOLTS.
Seeing a few of the THUNDERBOLTS in the rearview mirror.
Realizing you must make your OWN thunderbolts most of the time.
Thinking your head has all the important answers.
Having headaches because it doesn’t.
Realizing your belly is your center.
And hearing your heart align.
It’ll be a ride, my boy. May it be a beautiful one in all its realness.
As my Grandma Marjorie wrote to her young child, long ago:
“I want you to know, your people love you, always.”
Consider the power of living your life like you know you are loved.
(especially by your momma)
The rest is just a curious adventure to learn from.”