Parker is 16 But He Doesn’t Have a Car

Hi, PBO. Hello.

Here’s an awkward truth: You make me nervous. I think I’m kind of obsessed with wanting you to like me, and so I feel all anxious sometimes wanting to do and say the right things. It’s just that it was such an effortless GIVEN that you thought I was the coolest for so many years…but now? Man. I work hard to elicit that sandwich smile. I’m permissive and effusive and lenient with you and it’s all so embarrassing and a little pathetic. But I can’t help it. I adore you, and in my guts I already feel the deep, creeping ache of missing you when you go to college.

BUT THAT WON’T HAPPEN FOR OVER TWO YEARS, JANICA. Get yourself together! This baby of a boy is 16 years old, and he’d damn better love his mother and give her the attention and adoration she deserves. And in your Parker Boles way, you do. I mean, pretty much.

Parker, I still see you. You don’t see me as often, but I feel confident that I have mom-ed you in such a way that you don’t need to look for me to know that I am always here. You need me less, and I think I’m realizing that it means that there is more of me left to…to what? How do I fill the enormity of the Parker-shaped hole in my heart that you are crawling out of bit by bit, day after day?

Clearly, I have some feelings about all of this, babe. And 2020 is not the year of eloquence or poetic musings. It is the year of jumbled-up-brain-and-heart shit. (and Zoom meetings.) Being a mother hurts. Being your mother hurts. It helps. It heals. And then it does it all over again.

It comes down to this.

There is a moment in every single day when I look at you and marvel at your goodness. For 16 years, I have watched you grow and change in a million and one ways.

It is the pleasure of my life to be your mother.

In summary, Parker’s year: Guys and Dolls, first girlfriend, baseball, pandemic, online school as a freshman, pandemic, pandemic, first breakup, more baseball, pandemic, online school as a sophomore, pandemic, on campus school as a sophomore, SURPRISE PARTY!, oh, and looks like we still have a lot more pandemic, pandemic, pandemic. It’s been quite the ride.

I love you, my Parker. Here’s to being my favorite son. And don’t you ever underestimate the power of each and every goodnight hug you bestow on me, or the moment of lingering hand-holding you sometimes gift me post-high five.

I see you see me in those moments…and I treasure every one.