To Help Me Let Go

People have already starting warning me. In the months preceding their first extended flight from the nest, teenagers bestow a parting gift to their parents to help ease the transition for both...particularly rotten behavior. Although I can't seem to remember such a phase, I haven't conferred with Mom and Dad to confirm whether one existed for me. I guess I just wasn't expecting this advice to be relevant so soon.

Collin's expressing a sudden bout of independence, which simply put, means he refuses to listen to anything that comes out of my mouth. It's gotten so bad lately, that I fear for his safety when we are biking in the neighborhood.

It was during a recent bicycle outing to shop for clothes for Laura and Bob's upcoming wedding that Collin and I found ourselves in a stubborn standoff, with me demanding he park his bike next to CUB and continue on foot to the clothing store because of an altercation involving Aaron, while he stood in refusal, screaming and sobbing. In a moment of what can only be explained as karma, the first item Collin spied when we finally crossed the threshold of Marshalls was a Spiderman lunch pail, which, as he promptly reminded me, would be the perfect compliment to his Spiderman backpack. With the memory of our recent interaction still fresh in my mind, I didn't feel it would be a good idea to reward his behavior with a present, so I snuck back to the store after work and yoga on Tuesday evening before Adam had to leave for the 2010 FFL draft to make my purchase.

This morning, as I heard Collin stirring on the monitor, I grabbed the Marshall's bag and ran down to his bunk. We had a quick talk about how we should strive to treat each other with kindness and respect (our one and only house rule), and that my gift was to be a reminder that even though we sometimes have hard times, we will always love each other.

In the past few months, we've started reading chapter books in addition to the children's book we borrow from the HC Library. We've read Ramona the Brave, twice, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, The Magician's Nephew, and are currently reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. During our conversation, Collin explained his receipt of the gift by paraphrasing the following passage from The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis:

"Both of the children were looking up into the Lion's face as he spoke these words. And all at once (they never knew exactly how it happened) the face seemed to be a sea of tossing gold in which they were floating, and such a sweetness and power rolled about them and over them and entered them that they felt they had never really been happy or wise or good, or even alive and awake, before. And the memory of that moment stayed with them always, so that as long as they both lived, if ever they were sad or afraid or angry, the thought of all that golden goodness, and the feeling that it was still there, quite close, just round some corner or just behind some door, would come back and make them sure, deep down inside, that all was well."

I'm now confident he understands.