Teenagers
I’ve been thinking of my teenager - the one on the right - a lot these days - he finishes middle school in a couple weeks and will be moving up to high school in the fall. How did this happen? Look how tall he is! And yet, he’s still my baby. He’s the one who changed me from who I thought I was into someone I had never met before. He made me a mom, a mother, a mama, a mommy. And now, he’s almost grown. Soon he’ll be a man, move out (God-willing) and start on his own journey into adulthood. In the meantime, the teen years loom. And so, this poem:
"One day they disappear
Into their rooms.
Doors and lips shut
and we become strangers
in our own home.
I pace the hall, hear whispers,
a code I knew but can’t remember,
mouthed by mouths I taught to speak.
Years later the door opens. I see faces I once held,
open as sunflowers in my hands. I see
familiar skin now stretched on long bodies
that move past me
glowing almost like pearls.”
~Pat Mora
