My Son is Ten

Andres turns ten on Friday and, as they say, the past decade has flown by--except for when it hasn't, like that time when he threw up on me, or that 3-month period when it took us two hours each night to soothe him to sleep, or the summer of tantrums before he had his tonsils taken out, or during any of my many periods of concern that he wasn't doing X, or that he was late to do Y, or that he would soon be diagnosed with Z.

In those times I remember thinking, "I can't wait for him to be old enough that we can do fun things together." And now that I have gotten my wish, I would trade almost anything to be with him as he used to be for one more day.

This is not to say that I do not love him as he is now. I do. He is smart, funny, generally curious about things. He loves soccer. He loves talking soccer, both with me and his friends who also like talking soccer. He is a good friend. He would follow his friends almost anywhere--a sign of his trust in them, and also of his desire to have friends and be "one of the crew." His friends like him, too.

He enjoys reading (he just finished books 1-10 of A Series of Unfortunate Events). He enjoys watching YouTube videos of people playing Madden 2017 too, which I don't understand at all, but which he clearly wants me to understand because he keeps telling me about them. He calls me his "bro." He is a good brother to Lucia, and can either be a spectacular or difficult brother to Celia, depending on the day. He loves them both, though, and they both want to be just like him, whether he understands that or not. (I think he does, but this doesn't make his relationship with them any easier.)

But...I can not stop thinking about the old days. When he was a baby I would spend hours reading to him, and still more hours standing in his room gently rocking him to sleep. Mostly I would just stare at him. While he slept, while he played on his mat, while he lay in my arms--I would just stare and  smile, expecting no words or comments or anything else in return. His existence felt like a miracle.

Soccer has been a constant in his life. We took him to his first Revs game when he was only a few weeks old, and that must have done something, because he's had a ball at his foot ever since. Back when we lived on Turner St, we would kick a small soccer ball in the street or at Connors Park, a few blocks away. Before dinner, after naps, first thing in the morning, during weekends--that's what we did. Kick, kick, kick, kick, kick. Sometimes we would walk down to the turf fields at Brandeis to use the nets there. Now he's less interested in kicking and more interested in saving goals, so our outdoor sessions are more competitive than they used to be, as he spends most of his time diving to corral my shots. But perhaps the past decade of play has paid off. He is one of the best soccer players for his age in Newton and, though I can readily pick out multiple flaws in his game, his coaches all assure me that he is just the kind of kid they want on the pitch when the game is on the line. Kick, kick, kick, kick, kick.

I miss how his voice used to sound. I guess it's the same voice he has now, just softer and slower and with more mispronunciations. I miss his renditions of Abiyoyo. I miss standing in the door of his room, watching him talk to himself as he built with blocks, or played with stuffed animals, or read a book to Monkey. I miss reading Sandra Boynton books to him. (He loved "Pajama Time!") I also miss how protective he was of Celia when she first came home from the hospital. We had worried that Andres might not take well to sharing the spotlight, but he was fine with it, often shuffling over to the bassinet in our room to rub his new sister's forehead. "Hi, Cewwya!"

Andres is becoming his own person now. We are still important, but our opinions matter far less than those of his friends. As it should be, I guess. I'm not too worried about him yet. He has good friends--they are kind, interesting, and more goofy than sneaky. We haven't hit any real rough patches. How will this change in middle school? I'm trying not to think about that.

How does he rate us? Have we been good parents for his first decade? Have I been a good father? I hear my share of complaints. "You never do X," he'll say. "Why don't we ever get to do Y? So-and-so gets to do Y." Sometimes, he has a point. We don't travel like some of his friends, and we don't have a summer home like others. "But," I sometimes want to say to him, "I am home almost all the time, I seldom have to work at night or on weekends, and we have fun together. We go to the park, and I drive you to sports, and I've spent hours, days, weeks kicking the ball with you in the backyard. I even made a cool hero poster for your room. That counts for something, right?"

I think it's that question--how I have done by him--that is making Andres' 10th birthday a tough one for me. When he was 1, 3, even 5 years old, there was always time for me to figure things out. Nobody expects you to be a perfect parent right away. Time was on my side. But now he's 10. I've had a decade of experience, and I don't know whether I have improved at all. I still feel like I am winging it most days. And now that his interest in his friends has begun to eclipse his interest in us, I am yearning for the days when he was ours, only ours, and we had so much to look forward to and so much yet to do.

Of course these days are impossible to get back. They have been lived. They were neither as perfect nor as simple as I remember them. I feel fortunate that I took as many pictures and videos as I did (though in truth you can never have enough). And I am happy that I have my own memories, too, ones not captured anywhere except in my own recollections, though I know my mind is less reliable than a standard harddrive and that these many of these old memories will eventually fall away.

So perhaps the only thing to do is look to the future. It's scary. The next ten years will include middle school, high school, and *gulp* the beginning of college. I am not ready for any of this. But when I look at Andres now, as he approaches 10, I think he is ready. He likes being on the cusp of double digits; he's looking forward to the privileges and opportunities that the teen years provide.

Sometimes Andres and I talk about the old days. We reminisce about the old house, the old park, about the time I had a broken ankle and he ran all the way to Cappy's before I could finally catch up with him. He chuckles; he remembers all of that. But he doesn't want to go back. He's 10.

(Postscript: The big boy talks about his day.)