My first-born son is now a teenager. This has both he and I spinning. I HAVE A TEENAGE SON. How this happened I don’t know because I still feel like a teenager myself.

My sweet boy has resisted growing older every step of the way. He has always told us he does not want to grow up – even as young as 3 years old he knew that childhood was the best of times. I guess maybe his father and I have not made adulthood seem like much fun.

In his observation at skate parks and out in the world, teenagers have been both extremely annoying and also terrifying to him. He did not want to become a teenager. He was truly sad about the inevitability of it. Did I mention that neither of us can believe it actually happened? Here we are. With the growth spurts and puberty and cracking voice and big feet and interest in girls and changing vocabulary and eye rolling and everything.

I asked him on his birthday if he felt any different and he actually sat and contemplated this for a few minutes and finally told me the he did feel different. He said he feels SAFER.

SAFER! I mean…WOW. And obviously I asked him why and he told me that he is not a child any more so he is safer. He is a teenager. More responsible and equipped to take care of himself.

God, I could just cry my face off. Why does this seem so profound to me? This recognition that he has reached a new level of independence and it is so real to him? It has always been my job to keep him safe, and of course still is, but he also feels that he has a role to play in is own safety and he is up for the task.

How can he be so self-aware?

And why don’t I ever feel safer? I mean, safer because of my own self and not external forces like a police officer is standing nearby or I have a life jacket on.  If anything I feel less safe as time goes on. More vulnerable. More fragile. More mortal.

Part of me wants to open the can of worms about gender – is feeling safe a right of passage for boys? A natural state? So many questions beg to be asked but I am tired. I am busy. I don’t have the capacity to got there right now and I also wonder if that is a fundamental issue in our society. All of us women are too tapped out to rail against a modern civilized world in which being a female is still considered a weakness. The older I get the clearer it is to me, the more I see it and hear it. This pervasive tone of sexism here in our own very progressive country. AND how to describe the outrage I feel on behalf of all women who are living under total oppression all around the world, and I would go so far as to say hated in their societies. Unable to drive, receive an education, have independence. Made to cover themselves. Made to feel shame. I am ashamed. Ashamed that I do nothing to fight it but feel pissed off and blow off steam in what is essentially a secret blog.

Well, not nothing. I am a Mother to boys. I have a very serious and real responsibility to raise them to understand and respect the differences between women and men, and to shatter every myth that exists in our society about women and their inferiority. It overwhelms me at times. Like now.

I guess what is sinking in for me is that I don’t have much time. Childhood is so FLEETING. Life is a blink of an eye. I feel very urgent right now about reorganizing my priorities and where I put my energy and thoughts and effort. I am working on it.

For now, I take every chance I get to hug that kid as hard as I can AND he lets me. He has never been a particularly huggy kid, but I think he knows our hugging days are numbered, or maybe he knows I need it right now, or maybe someone gave him a stern lecture but I get to hug him and I do not take that for granted.

Holy Shit. Thirteen.