In the moment of truth

I returned home to San Francisco to discover that my extremely sweet 12-year-old son, with his baby face, his earring, and his sense of protectiveness for his family members, is now reaching that inevitable tipping point into teenagerdom.

I was told this by his mother, with him present. She said he has new moods now, and is hard to reach sometimes. As if to illustrate his new reality, Aidan started withdrawing then and there, looking sulky, refusing to say what he wanted to eat though he was hungry, and not getting his act together to leave his mother's house with me according to the timeline I had clearly spelt out for him.

Therefore, I walked out the door and down the stairs, got into my car and drove off.

Later in the afternoon, I returned with his baseball uniform in the front seat of my car, and we drove off together to the Sunset District, where his game was to be played in the rarest of weather -- hot, still, under a blue sky and the strange slant of autumn sunlight, which ended up affecting the outcome of the game, adversely.

As we drove, I got right to the point. "Is it true you are you changing?"

First, he apologized for how he had acted earlier, saying that he was tired from two straight late nights out and also that he had been hungrier than he had realized. After he ate, he explained, he felt better.

Then he said that he does feel like he is different now...that he wants more independence from us, his parents. And that he now feels new moods that he never felt before. He said he is not interested in girls yet but he understands why some of his friends are. And so forth. It was a good conversation. I told him that whatever happens, please remember he can always talk with me.

At the game, we had our normal interactions -- me rooting him on as one of the key members of our team, even as we went down to a one-sided defeat, 3-0. Afterward, we fetched his little brother and headed to my house for dinner and sleep.

I fell asleep wondering whether this really is the big transition for Aidan and me, the one I experienced with Laila, Sarah, and Peter. The one where it feels like your kid disappears for a decade or so, you know?

In Aidan's case, I realized, this stage will be especially difficult for me, because he has been a pillar of emotional support over the years, even as I know how inappropriate that is to describe one of your children that way. I hope I have been the same for him.

The most important indication of what he has been for me is this story:

I learned my mother was dying one afternoon in 2002. I drove home and told my family (I was still in the same house with the kids and their mother then)...they all drove me to the Oakland airport for my red-eye Jet Blue flight to Detroit. When we got to the airport, Aidan suddenly insisted he was going to go with me.

He was a freshly minted 8-year-old at the time. Neither his mother nor I had the power of will to resist him, so I bought him a ticket at the counter, and off we flew into the night, him and me.

When we landed and headed north to Lansing, and the hospice where my mother lay dying, I pulled out my brand new cellphone, which I had bought the day before precisely for this purpose, and dialed the hospice number nervously, asking for my mother's room.

One of my sisters answered and said Mom was indeed still alive, but sleeping deeply.

Aidan and I arrived, ahead of most of her other grandchildren. She talked to us a while and then said she was too weak and tired to continue.

I badgered her to hang on. My older kids were enroute, as were many of my sisters' kids, and they all wanted the chance to say goodbye to their grandma.

"I don't think I can hang on," my mother said, her voice thick with age, pain, medication, and the resolve only the dying know.

But I kept badgering her to "hang on, hang on."

Little Aidan witnessed all of this; I don't know how much he remembers. That night, in our hotel, he counseled me: "Dad, I don't think Grandma wants to hang on. Maybe you should stop telling her to."

It was the wisest advice I have ever received, and it came from the lips of an 8-year-old.

***

Last night, my sleep was fitful. The boys were sleeping soundly in the other room, but I was restless. I tossed and turned, reviewing so many parts of my complicated and uneasy, unresolved life.

Somewhere around 5 a.m., my door pushed open and somebody climbed into bed next to me. It was Aidan. I stroked his red hair and his freckled cheek. I hugged him, knowing this isn't going to happen very many more times. He truly stands on the edge of his teens, where my role is to be the one rebelled against, not the one who shares intimacies wth him.

So this time together side by side was special. We got up eventually, had our breakfast, and went off to our separate days.

Anyone who has had dinner with me for the past few years knows that one of the few constants in my life is Aidan's good-night call to me, somewhere around 9 or 9:30, every night. It has been the most reliable esolement of my life for some years now, through relationships with several girlfriends, job changes, and the like. He always ends our calls with this, "I love you so much, Dad."

Tonight, I thought he forgot to call. Then, I checked my messages at midnight, and it turned out I had had my phone on "vibrate," so I never heard his call. When I replayed the message, it was Aidan, reiterating that he loves me so much.

I suspect it doesn't get any better than this.

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