Adolescent Brains

It's 12:30 in the morning and I desperately need chocolate, but I'm not willing to go out in search of it.
I guess, I shouldn't have expected that raising teenage boys wouldn't result in one of those midnight conversations that "I'm almost 18 and I'll do what I want to do and if you have to call the police so be it."
I guess I'd seen Spencer's anger building this past weekend, but I always think my kids are rational enough that they can think logically. I forget about the adolescent brain and the fact that it doesn't fully form until their mid 20s. After nearly an hour of yelling by Spencer about my choice for him to come home rather than staying at a friend's house, after covering past choices and decisions good and bad, I conceded defeat and said I would drive him back to the friend's house.
He stood kind of stunned for a minute. I sat on the couch, wrung out like a dishrag, wondering if there is any way to keep my kids totally safe. I know there isn't. I told him that next year when he goes away to college he'll get to make decisions, good or bad, on his own.
He speaks in extremes -- life is all or nothing. It is the best time or it sucks. No happy mediums in this adolescent brain.
If I could, I would step back 10 years to the time when he played pretend in the backyard, grasping a plastic hockey stick like Davy Crockett's rifle.
I wish I could wrap him up and keep him from making stupid choices or at least buffer them. Give him a do over card in case he messes up.
All I can do though, is let him know that I love him and keep encouraging him to talk to me.
That and keep some chocolate in the house for times like this.

Stormy Fifteen

Last night, after dropping Tucker at swim practice, my eyes blurry with tears, I planned the blog post I would write. He turns 15 today and our relationship is stormy.
As a child, he loved me most ferociously. No one else would do for Tuck. He had to have Mama.
Now as a teenager, he hates with an equal passion.
Oh, I know that this will pass. I know he is marching toward an adulthood where his strength will be an asset, but that doesn't make it any easier to deal with him now.
I see him wince at every word I say. Any suggestion, any observation, any witticism is like a dagger in his teenage heart.
I spent the day shopping for the list of clothes he requested for his birthday, entering stores where the music is too loud, the lights are low and the scent of cologne burns the inside of my nose.

As he berated me on the drive to swim team, he couldn't know that I had skipped the Statehouse Rally to make his birthday special.
Earl called me as he walked past the rally on his way to work. People chanted. Bands played.
"Those are for people who don't have a kid having a birthday tomorrow," I explained to him as I walked past the Cinnabon inhaling deeply.

He also had no clue that his girlfriend and I were coordinating a surprise birthday party.

So all of those thoughts were racing through my brain as I went back home. I helped Grace with a French project by phone and nearly fell asleep before it was time to pick Tucker up from swim practice.
He got in the car and I decided to begin my birthday present to him. Silence. I would make no comments that would make him cringe. I would say nothing for most of the day.
"What's wrong? You okay? You tired?" he asked after a minute of silence.
So I broke my silence to say I was fine.

"You know, it's amazing how much better I feel after some exercise," he said.
Don't even get me started. I wanted to bat him upside the head. But I went back to silence instead.
I'll take the good mood when it comes and check out the sky for a blue moon while I'm at it.

Just Keep Swimming

This morning I didn't write from 5 to 7 a.m. That's because Grace and Tucker had to be at a swim meet at 6:15. Waking teenagers to swim at 5:45 a.m. is never a cheery event.
Tucker has been swimming year round since he was 8 years old. Even that first year, he showed promise, making a "star time" in back stroke and free style. Now as he wrestles his way through his thirteenth and fourteenth years, he wants to give up swimming. He has fought me about practices since last fall, complaining each time that I send him out the door with his black Speedo backpack. He swam for the middle school last year and is already faster than most of the high school boys.
Today was a USA meet rather than a YMCA meet. That means the fastest swimmers from around Ohio, southern Michigan and northern Kentucky gathered at Ohio State to swim this morning.
The air was cool as I dropped Grace and Tucker before parking in the garage. They both dogged it on their 100 free, their first events. Then came the 50 frees.
Tucker ended up fifth overall for the 13-14 boys. That means he made it into the finals this evening. USA swimming uses the times in the morning for preliminaries. The top 8 come back to swim the finals and the next 8 come back for a consolation round.
From the stands, I told his coach that he wouldn't want to come back. Tonight Columbus celebrates Fourth of July with Red, White & Boom. Tucker asked earlier this week if he could go to a party to watch the fireworks.
The coach talked with him for a minute, turned toward me in the stands and said, "He wants to come back."
"Okay," I said.
As soon as we left the building, he told me, "I don't want to go back tonight."
"You already told the coach you'd go," I replied. I really didn't want to hash this out. The coach had talked to him; he'd agreed, why did we have to talk about it. Or, more precisely, why did I have to listen to him complain. He is four-tenths of a second behind the first place finisher. Hundredths of a second behind the second through fourth place finishers. He could win this.
Sometimes I wonder if it is worth the constant arguments about swimming.
Pat, one of the dads in the stand with me, said, "If I were as good at anything as Tucker is at swimming, I'd keep doing it forever."
That's just it. When you're 14, you're pretty sure you can be good at anything you want to. You may not recognize that this is a special talent you have.
As we headed back to the pool at 4:30, Tucker said, "I'm not going to do as well as I did this morning."
"Why?" I asked suspiciously. Was this his plan?

"I'm tired," he said.
"I'll let you stay out until midnight tonight if you swim a faster time than you did this morning," I offered.
Game on. Usually he has to be home at 11.
He warmed up then sat and waited. He went to the diving well and warmed up some more.
Finally, it was his turn to swim.

They were swimming long course, which means they swim 50 meters all the way down. Most pools have a lane that goes 25-yards across then they come back 25 yards.
Tucker climbed on the blocks, his cap a bright green.

He dove in the water and moved his arms fast. He was ahead for much of the race. He finished in second place overall and dropped more than half a second. For anyone who cares about swim times: he had a 27.66 in meters long course. That translates to a 23.79 in short course yards.
I could tell he was proud afterward as he walked me through the race.
"Those other guys were all wearing Speedos and I wanted to show them I could beat them not wearing a Speedo." Tucker hates those little suits like underwear. He wears the suit that comes down tight to his knees. The guy who won wore a suit like Tucker's.

As we walked through campus, emptied by the holiday weekend, Tucker was satisfied with his hard work for that day. That doesn't mean that we won't argue again on Monday when it is time for swim practice again, but I plan to make him stick with it.

Teenagers

My Saturday night was spent not just dogsitting, but chaperoning this motley crew of 14-year-olds who arrived to celebrate Tucker's birthday.
If you'll recall, last year Tucker had the worst birthday ever. It included walking to school (late) in below zero weather. Getting two detentions. Not receiving the special lunch Earl dropped off for him so he had nothing to eat. And Earl learning that day that the newspaper was planning layoffs and he might lose his job, so we contemplated returning the birthday present.
I was determined that this year's birthday would be better and it was. After school I took him and five boys to a pizza place. Then this weekend we planned this party.
Tucker, out of all of my children, is presenting a challenge as he enters these teenage years. And sometimes I feel exasperated. At my wits' end.
Then I see my friend Ruth struggling with her son's anxieties that debilitate him. I see my other friend waiting to learn the results of her biopsy.
Each of us is walking our own path and sometimes things seem unbearable, but mostly just looking up from the path shows us that others have a more difficult climb. It reminds me to stop complaining.
I struggle to remember that the hardest and the easiest thing to do when a child wears me down, is to give him a hug and don't let go for a long while.