Like a host of other parents this spring, I have a child wrapping up his last year of school. (Our end-of-year festivities will look a bit different from most, as he’s been homeschooled since the first grade, but my son has been educated all the same.)
A dog-eared photo of him actually lives on the side of our fridge. It’s been there forever, this wallet-size keepsake of my son at eight months old, sporting jeans and a white shirt and showcasing a toothless grin. Usually I don’t notice it, too preoccupied straightening the surrounding magnets or ignoring it altogether as I pass through the kitchen in a rush. But with this very boy turning 18 in a couple of months, suddenly that grease-specked picture has become everything— it, and the countless other snapshots I’ve captured in desperate efforts to chronicle his whole life.
As this portion of my son’s story wraps up, it seems like the part of my brain overseeing memory function is trapped in a relentless loop. In one moment, I’m recalling my son at three years old, celebrating his birthday Hawaiian-style with a lei circling his neck and wearing Elmo swimming trunks, and in the next, he’s 15, nervously learning how to drive behind the wheel of our Dodge Caravan. My thoughts have been all over the place, wondering how this kid’s life will unfold and if I have done enough as his mom.
More than anything I’ve attempted to instill in him, though, I’m hopeful my child sees—anytime he looks back and wonders what on earth I was thinking—that every choice, big or small, stemmed from a place of love.
Because I know there are some things he will question. No doubt, he’s going to wonder why I always insisted on a buzz cut when he was a kid and why we went to church every week. He’s going to question why I refused to let him have a cell phone when everyone else was getting one and why I was unflinching in my efforts to govern all he watched and listened to. He’s going to wonder about the little things, like why I made tater tot casserole just about every week (one of those more affordable meals that definitely was not his favorite), and the big things, like why I decided to homeschool him in the first place.
