It's Your Birthday

Last Wednesday, September 30, was Hawkens' 15th birthday. Sometimes I feel the need to type it out in black & white, unconvinced as I am that it's been that long since he was born. The parenting journey is fraught with self-doubt and sighs of relief, and mine may have had more than its share of the former. Sometimes I think it takes sheer cockiness to decide to have a child, to think you have enough of a clue to raise another human being to a healthy state of mind and body.

Looking back I see it was indeed cockiness dabbled with cluelessless on my part, but tossed with a healthy pinch of intuition, a dollop of faith or wishful thinking, a barrel of luck, and a giant heart ready to bleed out love (gag). Trial and error, maybe that's all it's ever been throughout the history of mankind.

So here's our young hero today: enamored of Alice in Chains (proclaims it to be the greatest band, despite my telling him he's wrong); plays his bass guitar at all hours of the night; putting off doing theatre until the second semester in order to cope with new academic challenges ("do you know what Asian Fail is? anything below an A-!"); taking Honors Geometry and has a posse of Korean kids to eat lunch with; admonished me today for not raising him with a clearer idea of what it means to be a Democrat vs. Republican (I assigned him some internet research out of this); discovering athesism and annoying me with quotes. (I sure hope his grandparents aren't reading this post.)

Happy Birthday, Hawkens.