Growing Pains

In less than a week, my son goes back to school...it is the unofficial end of summer for him. For me on the other hand, summer is just beginning to get in the swing. And, while I adore my child and love spending days with him doing not much of anything, I feel I will love and adore him even more when he is back in school. This is because sometime over the past summer, he has become a teenager, and as a result he no longer knows I am the funnest, coolest Mom on the planet. He has forgotten that I am the woman who once spent a week mastering the ability to make fart sounds with a blade of grass simply to amuse him. He has overlooked the fact that I once spent days walking around Disney simply to locate the exact right 'STRING SPINNER WITH ELECTRIC LIGHT' so that he could bring it home, take it apart and reconstruct it into a sophisticated high speed cat toy that whipped all the cats, even old Boo-Boo, into a frenzy. He has also forgotten that I allowed, even ENCOURAGED him to make 'Jello' balloons. And that I applauded and supported his efforts to construct endless types of shooting devices that have shot raw potatoes, straight pins and a host of other stuff in between. He has forgotten that I have actively participated in the planning and construction of numerous kites, whose sole purpose was for us to set fire to them while they were aloft. The six-foot wide parachute I constructed for a GI Joe that got stuck up in a tree about 100 feet in the air (don't ask how we got it up that high) which housed numerous generations of squirrels until it finally fell out of the tree last Spring, has been forgotten. He has lost interest in me. I have become simply ... his parent. Beyond being a supplier of food, I hold no promise of anything interesting for the boy. I am worried that our future together is toast, unless I somehow gain the ability to beat him at his favorite XBox game, or learn how to ride a motorcycle, or do something so completely unique that he can't help but say 'Oh wow, that's cool, Mom'. Until then, I will pump him full of nutritious sustenance and stand at the ready for the day when he may need my help in finishing that paper clock we started building a few month's ago...