A Letter to Our Son on His 9th Birthday

Dear Graham,

I waved goodbye to you as you headed to school on your birthday (an inch taller than the day before, surely, and with a confident new bounce in your step), and suddenly it hit me: You are halfway to an adult. I don’t know how to get my mind around that, because at the rate the years are speeding by, 18 is bound to sneak up on me like some kind of time-slip ninja.

We went on a family vacation to South Dakota this summer, and your favorite part was visiting the Badlands. “It’s like walking on Mars!” you kept exclaiming, your awe mingled with adventure. Before I could shout something vaguely cautionary, you were scampering over hills and scaling rocks like a mountain goat.

With visions of catastrophic falls and skinned knees dancing in our heads (to say nothing of lurking rattlesnakes), Dad and I had an airtight plan: We’d simply keep you and your brother right beside us so we could catch you if you fell. It quickly became clear, however, that you are much more gazelle-like than we are. So we tried a backup plan: We’d just keep you in our line of sight. Even this was a challenge, given your double dose of agility and fearlessness. And at a certain point, I had to admit to myself: Even if we’re right there, is there anything we can do to stop you from cascading down a rocky ledge?

***

The name doesn’t do the place justice—the Badlands are truly remarkable. The hills took us by surprise, rising out of nowhere from an unassuming stretch of prairie. The scene was like a kaleidoscope, reflecting various shades of red, purple, and orange, depending on the time of day and the angle of sunlight. But when we set foot on the hills themselves, the ground beneath us seemed to be eroding as fast as we could take a step. Indeed, according to the national park sign you read to us, this kind of sedimentary rock erodes an inch per year—compared to 1,000 years for most rocks.

This strikes me as an apt metaphor for Parenting Standard Time: The ground shifts under us the moment we get our feet planted.

***

So many things have surprised me about parenting in these nine years since you were born: the vacuuming frequency, the rate at which we go through bananas, how fast my body can move when you’re hurt. But one of the most consistent conundrums has been the passage of time. I know that technically a minute is always 60 seconds and there are always 24 hours in a day. But how is it that an hour when you were crying inconsolably as an infant felt like a week, and that week when our whole family had the flu felt like a month? Meanwhile, the year between eight and nine slipped through the hourglass like a handful of crumbly rocks.

According to another sign you read, the Badlands is the only national park where there are walkable sections without trails, where there’s open space to explore and create your own path. True, there are markers along the way, almost like a scavenger hunt. It occurs to me that parenting is a lot like walking in the Bandlands: There’s no road map for this. The scenery is ever-changing, shifting practically under our feet. But it’s beautiful in its very changeability. There’s a new vista at every turn.

And I’m trying to catch up, attempting to savor the mental snapshots as they come, fighting the longing for solid rock under my feet.

Now that you’re nine, I feel it more than ever, this tension of wanting to protect you and wanting to empower you. You are increasingly faster than I am, going places I can’t go. As the ground shifts beneath your feet and ours, Dad and I won’t be able to protect you from everything. We won’t be able to stop you from slipping every time. But we know the One who can. And we can do what’s in our power to equip you with wings so that when you stumble, you’ll fly instead of fall.

In the meantime, we’ll stock up on Band-Aids. (For all of us.)

So happy birthday, our halfway-to-a-grownup kid. The view from here may be shifting faster than the hills of South Dakota, but it sure is lovely.

We love you!
Mom and Dad

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
    where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
    the Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip.

Psalm 121:1-3