Change, it is a’comin’”

Didn’t someone sing that once?

Maybe not, but that’s the refrain banging away inside my skull these days.

Change.

Morning. School time. “Bye, boys,” I call from the door. “Have a good day! Make good choices! I love you!!”

“Love you too, Mom!” yells my first grader at the top of his lungs, the words ricocheting around the cul-de-sac like an echo in a canyon. Silence from my fifth grader.

I sigh as I close the door. This is scary business, this uncharted territory my eldest is taking us into.

He is not as he was.

What he was was a happy toddler belting out “Home, home on the range” in the back yard. What he was was a sociable preschooler coming to whisper glowingly, “Mom! I made a new friend!” What he was was the one always chosen in his class to be the friend/mentor to new students.

And now . . . .

I know how to kiss an owie and make it better. I know how to chase the boogie-man away. I know how to parent and nurture little people.

But my eldest isn’t a little person any more.

“Nothing is permanent but change.”

This one I know. Heraclitus said it.

I wonder if he was looking at his tween when he wrote it down.

Tween. That’s the term our label-loving society has assigned to my eldest’s age group.

Internet dictionary: Tween: A child between middle childhood and adolescence, usually between 8 and 12 years old.

But what does being a tween mean?

Well, I may not know what it means but I sure know how it acts!

Afternoon. I stand at the back gate of the schoolyard.

My fifth grader slowly approaches, one of an undulating, organically shifting group. His group.

“Hi, son,” I say cheerfully as they pass me.

On good days I get a short, “Hi,” back. Other days I get a flick of the eyes and a chin jerk in my general direction. The look is easy to interpret: “Mo-om! I’m with my friends!”

Fortunately my first grader shows up then. He grabs my hand and chatters non-stop about his day.

At home the fifth grader just wants to hurry through his homework and piano so he can call a friend. “Sit down and have a snack,” I say. During snack I ask each boy to tell me three things about his day.

I’ve learned that if I ask, “How was your day?” I only get a grunted, “Fine,” from my eldest.

The first grader is ready to repeat the whole walk-home-from-school conversation. My fifth grader reels off three short sentences in about 5 seconds. I ask questions to force him to add detail.

How does that story go?

A man approached a wise man and said, “I’m so worried about my teenager. I can’t get him to talk to me. How do I talk with my teenager?” The wise man answered, “Shrink him back down to a baby and start talking then.”

Did I talk enough when he was young? Did we talk enough?

Night-time. In the dark I rock the baby and softly sing a lullaby. “Mom?” comes a disembodied voice. The tension within me eases as I smile an unseen smile. “Yes?” I answer. This is when it comes. Here in the soft blackness of night he wants to talk. Silly things, mostly but sometimes real things. Big things. Important things.

“Oh, why don’t you just grow up!”

Isn’t that what even the best of us sometimes think and even what some of the worst of us sometimes say?

And yet how bittersweet when they do just that.

I think, all in all, Longfellow said it best:

“All things must change to something new, or something strange.”

Strange indeed! Change.

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2. coulda heard a pin drop
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I guess I had complained about my bare walls one time too many because one day, when she came to pick up her kids who I had been tending, a lady from my ward said, “Let’s hang some pictures!” then she refused to leave until I got her a hammer and a bag of nails. As she eyed my walls with an expert’s eye, I began pulling pictures from behind computer desks and from under couches (at one point she gazed with delight on some watercolor paintings my grandma had done and exclaimed, “Oh! I’m so glad we got your grandma out from under the couch!”). Then away she went, hanging with a will!

I was following her around in an anxious daze, juggling several framed pictures and trying not to be worried that she was hanging away with nary a thought for measuring tape or stud finder, when some of her conversation began to penetrate the fog. I heard things like, “. . . such a good mother . . . never heard . . . raise voice with children . . .” and “ . . . so strong . . .” and “. . . do so much for everyone . . .” and “ . . . own path to the Celestial Kingdom is clearly marked out . . . .” “My!” I thought, “I wonder who this paragon of virtue is that she’s talking about!” Then, after a few more comments I realized that she was talking about me! I just about dropped my pictures and croaked right there. To put it bluntly, I ain’t no paragon.

The above experience brought to mind a question I’ve had for a while: Who are we really? Are we the person we ourselves think we are or are we the person that others think we are? I can tell you right now that I raise my voice at my children far, far too often and I am too often impatient, especially at bedtime (my poor oldest has been heard to say, “Mom, do you even like having children?” Aargh! What a stab to the heart!). I am NOT strong: my sins and weaknesses are legion. I feel that I’m failing miserable in my calling by not even coming close to doing all I need to do and for the past couple of years I have turned off the TV after a wonderful two days of General Conference only to bury my head in a pillow and weep as I try to resign myself to losing my family and living in the Terrestrial Kingdom because I’m just not making the grade here on earth. And yet, apparently, others see me differently.

I’ve asked this question of a few friends and I usually get the answer, “We’re probably a combination of both: how we see ourselves and how others see us.” Okay, I accept that but I can’t help but wonder, how much of which?

I know that we all have “Sunday faces” ”“ the good side of us that we show to the world. Now, I’m not saying that Sunday faces are bad and I don’t think that the “Sunday face” is a deception. It’s just putting our best foot forward, so to speak. I believe our “Sunday faces” are as much of our true selves as, say, the vile worm of our deepest, darkest moments (as is everything in between).

I guess with all of this I’m just trying to find some sort of comfort ”“ some assurance that I am better/stronger than I think I am. I hope the real me is more of how others see me but I fear that I am really – mostly – the way I see myself. Sigh. Oh well. At least I now have pictures on my walls.

So, who are you and how do you reconcile the discrepancy between what others see and what you know to be the truth about yourself?

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1. Noise
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3. I’m Not Perfect. Can I Still Go to Heaven?–An Interview with Anthony Sweat