Thinking about my teenager

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

"Why Do You Care?"

I was putting Ryan to bed (he's 10) a couple nights ago and I was telling him about the people I saw at the gym that evening. I had seen our church sexton there, Danny, who's African American, and also a really old woman using the elliptical machine really slowly. It sort of made me giggle but I was also very inspired by her. Planet Fitness prides itself on being a "Judgment Free" zone so I really had no business snerking; after all who am I but a 40-something soccer mom on an elliptical machine. Pfft.

But I digress.

I began to tell Ryan about the variety of people at the gym: old and young, male and female, black and white, American, Latino, Indian, and Middle Eastern, when out of the blue Ryan said, "Why do you care? They're all allowed to be there, so why do you care who's there?"  He said it with a tone, too.  A tone that implied that I was making a "thing" out of the different-ness of people (which I was). And that I was being judgmental, and perhaps noticing everyone's differences wasn't necessary.

I get it. And I'm glad he asked that question, "Why do you care?" Because it made me stop and think. Why do I care? At first I was a little put-off by his question, since he sounded sort of snippy. But then I realized that he was coming from a place that believes that lots of different people in any given place is NORMAL, and I wasn't.  I was coming from a place that saw that as an ideal, not the norm.

So I explained to him that I care because it's important to me that there be a variety of different people in the places I go.  I explained that sometimes where we live people can isolate themselves with their own kind: race, culture, religion, and never meet anyone else different from themselves.  And I explained that I didn't think that was healthy for society.

I explained that I care about the diversity of my gym, our schools, our church, my grocery store, because I think we are a better society when we appreciate each other's differences: our rich cultural heritages and histories, our different religious traditions, our different ethnic foods, music and cultures. When we are not afraid of each other we can talk to each other. Then we can learn from each other and we begin to care about each other.

Do you see what the result will be?

Grace. Peace. Love.