Seventeen. The age that feels like a prologue to freedom. The big one before the big one. My son has hit it, and suddenly I feel like I’m standing on a cliff looking out at both the child he was and the adult he is about to become.
Seventeen is the age where I, as his mom, start to realize that while he’s legally still mine (and still asking me what’s for dinner), his spirit has one sneaker already laced up for the big world out there. This is the year of SATs, college essays, whispered conversations about “near” versus “far,” and whether “away” really means away-away or just a train ride away. It’s also the year I start to wonder: will he still want to go on trips with me? Or will he suddenly prefer trips with friends, girlfriends, or whoever else shows up in the next whirlwind year of discovery?
I mark this birthday with both sadness and joy. Sadness because every milestone is a reminder of the little boy who once clutched my hand on the subway, who now towers over me and questions the world in ways that make me proud and occasionally dizzy. Joy because I get to see the remarkable young man he’s becoming. Self-determined, thoughtful, funny, and increasingly independent, even if “independent” sometimes just means managing his gaming schedule without me nagging.
Of course, this is also the year where parenting feels like juggling flaming torches while riding a unicycle: college applications, medical appointments, school deadlines, and those heart-stopping moments of realizing he may not actually need me as much as he once did. Or maybe he does, just in quieter, subtler ways.
Seventeen is the liminal space between boyhood and manhood, between dependence and freedom. And while today’s kids don’t exactly sprint out the door at 18 anymore, sometimes not even at 25 or 30, this birthday feels like the great prelude to launch.
So here’s to 17. The almost, the not-quite, the thrilling and terrifying in-between. My son’s big one before the big one. And my heart, full and cracking at the same time, as I prepare for the next chapter right alongside him.
Categories: Children, Culture, family, identity, mental health, Psychology, society
psychologistmimi 
The supposed liberation of children at 18 is based on an agrarian notion that a child had become a man. However, a child of that time had worked shoulder to shoulder with his parents at their business or farm or ?? and had contact with adults, learning basic facts, truths, and becoming masculine or feminine. The feminine of that time was still a sheltered person with few rights of her own but had been taught boundaries. This no longer happens in most ‘two breadwinner” families. Our schools have become so ineffective at educating, but so good at socialization, that what they create is Taylorism’s stolid ox, who does repetitive chores without questioning anything. “Whatever the boss wants.” The child’s brain does not fully mature until 22-26 years of age, and they do not become a thinking person until years later. My child was challenged to study hard, question everything, and study daily. She is an engineer now who has the imagination to design and build large water parks, slides and swimming pools for Margaritaville. Eighteen is no stepping off point in this day and time. WDE
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At 17 for me at Least me and
my Wife Sharing a Photo of A Senior
Portrait of me With A Friendly Greek Waitress Yesterday
She thought i Looked Like i Had it all Together at that
Age Yet all i Really Had Was Almost All Straight A’s for that
Year and Many More College Years to Come Yet So Lost from
The World of Social Empathic Artistic Emotional Real Spiritual Intelligences
Truly Trapped in a
Left Hemisphere
Materially Reducing
Process Way of my
So-Called Form of
Autism Then So
Hard to Find the
Big Picture of Both
Hemispheres in Peaceful
Balance of Planets Revolving
Around Stars in Harmony of Being
With the Ability to Deeply Reach Out
And Touch Other Planets Orbiting Their Stars
Indeed Some of Us Are Slow Bloomers Fortunately
for me my
Closest
Relatives
Stuck by
my Side
Exploring
Caverns Without Light
It’s True i Never Physically
Escaped my Home Town
Yet Within i Continue to
Find Treasures Beyond
Any Imagination of
What Was Possible then
Happy Birthday to your Son
Hopefully He Will Be one of the
ones to Bring A Bit More Sanity to
Our Current World Sadly Rotting Orange
for what
Used to
Be Red
White and
Blue More
Than What
Rolls around
A Bowl and Goes Down a Hole
Yet It’s True the Flowers Still Bloom New
Always Hope for Building New Soul Castles Together Now
Dear
Miriam
With
SMiLes..:)
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You will survive – and many things will not ever be the same.
I did three while chronically ill, and all three went off to college at 17 – because we couldn’t hold them back any more.
We still like them.
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