Ten

Dear Thelonious,

Today is your tenth birthday. You are officially in the double digits. Half way to twenty. Three years until you are a teenager. Six years until you drive. Twenty years until you get married. And as you so calmly informed me a couple nights ago, only 8 years until you graduate high school with the class of 2019. I almost fell out of my chair when I heard that. I think that you actually like getting older. It seems to bring you some pleasure knowing that it freaks me and your dad out.

The festivities this year will be many. Not only are you turning ten, but your dad is graduating from Seattle Pacific University with a Master of Arts in Theology. Did you hear that? I said YOUR DAD IS GRADUATING!!!! You may not realize what a big deal this is because he has been in grad school since you were three so I guess it must seem completely normal. But I assure you, it is not. This weekend will be my favorite of the year celebrating both you and your dad. Your grandparents and cousin Katie are in town for both celebrations. Next week, you and your sister travel with them to California to see family and go to Disneyland. When you are done there you will fly back, by yourselves (sans adults), and head right into summer. I know you are super excited about the trip and Disneyland but I think the icing on the cake will be the flight. You have been asking me if you could fly by yourself since you were four. For a few years I had airline regulations on my side, but now that you are technically old enough it was only a matter of time.

When I think back over this last year there are a few things that stand out to me as markers in your journey. Top of the list is Hero clix. This is a game. A complicated game. A long game. A hard game. It’s played with little plastic super hero figures that have points and damage and powers and all kinds of other attributes that I cannot begin to recount. You play on some kind of grid-lined board. It takes hours to play and months to really learn and longer even to excel. You spend nearly every Sunday afternoon at the comic book store playing in tournaments against grown men named Panda and Goblin. There are sometimes other kids but you are always the youngest. We went with you to the first couple tournaments and hung out or waited in the car. Boring! Your dad has even played in a couple. But now we take you and drop you off and pick you up three hours later. Luckily, your dad is such a regular at this comic book shop that the owner and staff know our whole family. They are good people and we know you are safe there. The fact is, you love this crazy game. You spend so much of your time planning, strategizing, and selecting your teams for the tournaments. You have started to try to get some of your friends to play and are starting to have some success winning one or two of them over to the game.  Your dad is almost as obsessed. He built you both an elaborate 3-D board with buildings and little trees. I think the crew at Dreamstrands is pretty envious of that. You also have a whole display area in the office dedicated to your ever-growing Hero clix collection.  It really is more than a game to you, which doesn’t surprise me. It is in your very nature to approach your interests with such passion and focus and pleasure.

Another feature of this last year has been your comedic uprising. You love gag gifts (extendable fork, pack of gum that gives an electric shock, etc), the Simpsons, The Encyclopedia of Immaturity and all things slapstick. You are constantly telling jokes. I think all of this is a prerequisite to being a 10-year old boy. Your favorite are Chuck Norris jokes. As in…

• Chuck Norris counted to infinity. Twice.
• Chuck Norris’ tears cure cancer. Too bad he’s never cried.

The best part is that when you first started telling these jokes, you didn’t know who Chuck Norris is. This makes me laugh every time I think of it. One of these days maybe I’ll let you actually watch an old Chuck Norris movie. Or if you’re lucky, and episode or two of “Walker: Texas Ranger”.

On a couple of occasions you have come home from school with a new joke that gets this reaction.

Me: Who told you that joke?

You: um, a kid at school..

Me: Do you know what that joke means?

You: um, I guess not?

Me: I’ll explain that to you when you’re in high school…and don’t repeat that one anywhere!

Which brings me to the topic of…you guessed it…sex! It became apparent this year that it was time to start educating you a little more intentionally about this topic.  I suppose you will die of embarrassment that I would even dare say such a thing publicly. But that is just the beginning of how much your dad and I will embarrass you over the next ten years so you might as well get used to it now. I won’t go into gory details except to say that you now know what sex is, where babies come from, how it all works. And this is just the beginning. Knowing the mechanics doesn’t mean you really understand or are prepared to deal with everything that this world will throw at you. And that time and those conversations will come. But for now at least I can rest a little easier knowing that you don’t think babies come out of a woman’s belly button.

When I was your age I was at a friends’ house watching an episode of “Eight is Enough” (you can ask me about that one later) where one of the teenagers was deciding whether or not to go on the pill*. I remember innocently asking my friend’s mom “What is the pill?”. She was Catholic and told me to go home and ask my mother. I knew then that whatever this “pill” was it must be bad, so of course, I never asked my mom and remained ignorant for a number of years. All this to say I hope your dad and I can create an open and supportive environment for you to be able to talk to us about anything and everything–sex, love, your body, relationships– whatever. We love you and never want you to feel afraid or ashamed to talk to us. Ok, enough of the embarrassing. At least for now.

You have continued with Tae Kwon Do and are now a brown belt. Next is red belt, then junior black belt. This is an incredible accomplishment. You have gone week after week, month after month for over two years and worked really hard toward your goal of becoming a black belt. And now that you are in reaching distance of your goal you are starting to feel the pain. The belts take longer to earn now. They are harder and a lot more work. You have talked about wanting to quit. It’s interesting what conversations this has sparked between your dad and I. We have had to work through our own issues to come to a place where we can parent you through this difficult time. It’s our job to take the long view because we know that you cannot possibly know or understand what impact giving up now would have on you. We also know it’s our job to love and support you no matter what you do or don’t do. And we want you to know that whether you are a black belt or brown belt or no belt at all does not make us love you any more or any less. We could not be more proud of you. We could not like or enjoy you more than we do now.

There are a few other things of note. This year you got braces (yuck!). You started out with one of those expanders which looks like some kind of medieval torture device and now have four braces on your top front teeth. You have been a champ about it, which is good because it’s looking like another couple years and another couple million dollars of hardware for you. So much for a family trip to Hawaii or a college education or new shoes. Oh well, at least you’ll have enough room in your mouth for all of your teeth.

We didn’t travel much this year. We took a family trip to Lake Chelan at the end of last summer. For Thanksgiving, Aunt Bobee, Uncle Eric and Calvin came to visit. We got some crazy snow that week so it threw all of our plans into chaos but it was still a good time. At Christmas we stayed in Seattle and spent the morning with Myra, Josh and Max who had just moved in with us a few weeks earlier. It was a lovely time.

All in all, it’s been a good year. I feel that you are just on the verge of moving into a new phase of life. Right now you are so independent and cool but also so affectionate and sweet. You still like hanging out with your dad and I and don’t mind being seen with us in public. I know it won’t be this way for too much longer. So I want to stay in these moments with you and enjoy every second possible. Just the other day I used the word “yo!” and you just looked at me and rolled your eyes and said, “Mom, you really should never, ever say that again. You are embarrassing yourself.” And so, I know it’s coming. No matter how cool I think I am, someday you will think I’m just a hopeless geek whose life mission it is to humiliate you. But we’re not quite there yet…

So let me end by wishing you the best birthday ever. Enjoy your day, your triple-chocolate birthday cake baked from scratch by your Grandma, your new Green Lantern Hero Clix, your pocket knife, and your family, who love you and support you and although they may embarrass you at times, will never, ever stop loving and adoring you.

All my love,

Mom

*So for the record, the pill is an oral contraceptive that suprresses ovulation and helps prevent pregnancy. Although it can be highly effective if taken properly, it does not prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Translation: Always wear a condom.