A 17th Birthday Celebration

Younger Son was in town for a long weekend (Thursday to Monday morning) to celebrate his 17th birthday with me.

YS has been in SF with his father for about five weeks, the longest he and I have ever been apart. Even though he lived with a friend during the spring semester which just ended, I saw him once or twice a week.

The upside to the long break from each other is that we had time to really miss each other. The downside, at least for me, is that I missed him (and I think he missed me as well).

We spent a couple of evenings together up in the garden in the sky, his former fort. He likes it as a garden, and told me when he has a house of his own he is going to have a vegetable garden. (I chalked that up to my positive influence.) He praised the food at home loudly and often, and said he doesn't get enough to eat at his father's house. I think they have forgotten how much skinny teenage boys need to eat, and both his father and stepmother are fat-phobic, so they don't like to buy him ice cream.

But also, complaining about the food elsewhere was a backhanded way of letting me know he was happy to be home.

Along the same lines, he asked me to cut his hair. I've cut both his and his older brother's hair since they were babies, and they both refuse to go to a barber, at least when they are in Seattle. Younger Son complained that the barber in San Francisco didn't cut his hair right. So I "fixed" it for him.

Seventeen is an awkward age, in many ways. It's also an awkward birthday, not one of the big milestones like 16 (driver's license) or 18 (legal adulthood) that bookend it. It's old enough to be protective of one's status as an almost-adult, however.

So when we went to Toys R Us to buy things to play with at the party in the park, at first Younger Son hung back from what he really wanted--the foam swords. But we bought those, and Nurf guns, and water balloons (who's ever too old for water balloons?) ...

And then, as we strolled the Lego aisle, Younger Son said, "This is bringing out my inner child."

To which I responded, "Darling, your inner child isn't buried very deep."

He took that in good part, and had a blast at his party, chasing his friends all over the park armed to the teeth with water balloons. And he stayed up most of the night on his last night in Seattle, trying to complete the Star Wars Lego I bought him for a birthday present.

@ Jeanne Sather 2007.

Comments

[Jacqueline]

damn, you're an awesome mom.

[Teresa Hartman]

Ah, Ninja Librarian approves of foam swords! And the mom in me agrees with the Lego - we still give Lego to the 19 first son. I am so glad you had a great time together!

[Sara]

Sweet. :)

Of course what most people don't know at 17 is that you are never, never too old for water balloons, foam swords, or Legos.

[Jeanne]

Thanks everyone! It was a great weekend, and Younger Son is a great kid.