Sixteen

Caleb, sixteen, and sometimes sweet (are boys allowed?). Thoughtful, affectionate, affirming. Quiet, needing down time to play guitar, to listen to music. Never quite enough sleep. Aggressive on the field, coordinated, strong, wiry, endurance. Aware. Thankful. Sometimes a loner, not one to bend to the crowd. Keeps his thoughts to himself mostly. More likely to just shut the door and do the work than to complain or ask for help. Quick wit. Sharply funny, in the right mood could be a stand-up comedian, the eye for the incongruous. Still silly.

Today Caleb turned 16, right here where he was born. All three meals a celebration, punctuating the normal work of the day. Culminating in five friends joining us for tacos, chocolate cake, and home-made ice cream (inaugurating the hand-crank freezer that took up the better part of a trunk, 10% of our luggage allowance!). Crazy noise-making horns and bubbles so the HS Juniors could revert to their true 5-year-old souls.

Birthdays wipe me out, carrying the weight of expectation through the day, to push to make it special because I want to honor the person I love. But the rest of the world turns on, punky babies are born and forget to breathe properly, children vomit, mothers are anxious, labs come back abnormal, xrays need reviewed. So the day becomes a struggle to be two things at once, creative at-home cake-baking mom and responsible in-the-NICU doctor, all accentuated by the rigid time-keeping of a boarding school where the friends who come for dinner have to be at dorm study halls at 7, though mercy was reluctantly granted for a 15 minute lateness. Add in a basketball home game for Jack, Scott and I tag-teaming on cooking and cheering and hospital calls (alone I NEVER would have made it). I suppose that tension between the worlds of work and home started back with the first giving-birth and will continue until they are all grown and launched, and beyond.