T Says....

These past few weeks have been eventful ones for both T and me. I've noticed some major fissures as my boy slowly becomes 'tween: displaced anger, secrets, a random zit or two, even an offhand blush in a conversation about a girl.

I am not ready for this. I am not ready for this. I am not ready for this.

But then again, are you ever ready for the onslaught that is parenting? I think not. I know not.

I remember for weeks after T's birth, bubbling over with a certain rage. I read every parenting book available to me prior to birthing this child and no one, absolutely no one told me really, what it'd be like.

In retrospect, it may be that all the stages of parenting are like this. You only get admitted to the secret club of "oh, I've been there," after it's far too late and you've been stripped of your parental innocence yet again.

Perhaps it's this way by intricate design. Those experienced parents with older kids are still trying to get their bearings, wrap their minds around this next stage. And the next.

***

I picked T up from my parents Sunday. He'd been hanging with my dad for several hours and I could tell immediately that the two of them were up to something. They whispered to one another as I started wrangling up all his winter supplies: boots, socks, snow pants....one glove...two. He wore on his mug a look of sheer guilt, and the giggles erupted out of him in uncontrollable snorts and spurts.

He giggled the entire way home. He giggled off and on the remainder of the day. He'd look up from whatever he was doing, take a look at me and burst into a fit of the giggles, again.

He wouldn't tell me why. It was like a special form of torture, not being let in on the joke. But T was stalwart in the face of my prodding. Stubborn, even.

Several hours later as we scrambled to get out the door for a Super Bowl party he skips in to the bathroom, drops his pants, plops down on the toilet and declares:

"I'm here to drop the kids off at the pool, mom!"

And he completely lost it. He laughed, and laughed, the sweet release of a secret unleashed.

I've always sort of wondered what went on with my dad and T in their tender moments alone, and now I learn he's there teaching my kid this lovely euphemism about poop.

T's delight in the hilarity of the expression, and my subsequent relief that indeed he wasn't laughing at me, offered a rare glimmer that perhaps, T's youth, it's not yet wholly gone.

And then T had to remind me: poop is, for all practical purposes, ALWAYS funny.

So maybe not.