{"id":172,"date":"2009-11-09T23:16:25","date_gmt":"2009-11-09T23:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katrinakenison.com\/2009\/11\/09\/seventeen\/"},"modified":"2009-11-09T23:16:25","modified_gmt":"2009-11-09T23:16:25","slug":"seventeen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/seventeen\/","title":{"rendered":"Seventeen"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>My baby turned seventeen yesterday. \u00a0Of course, he hasn&#8217;t been a baby for a very long time, and yet, because he is my youngest, I can&#8217;t help but think of him that way. \u00a0Even now. \u00a0Even though he is six feet tall, doing math that is far beyond my comprehension, and creating a life in which he is increasingly, and appropriately, independent. \u00a0Sometimes it&#8217;s hard for me to know exactly where my sphere of influence ends these days, when to speak up, when to be quiet and remember that it&#8217;s time for him to be making his own choices.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\u00a0Yesterday morning, Jack drove his dad and me to our favorite breakfast spot. \u00a0The sun poured in, onto our favorite table. \u00a0We ordered coffees all around (he&#8217;s drinking coffee; I&#8217;m saying nothing), and talk turned to nationalism and liberalism and conservatism, monarchies and democracies (he&#8217;s taking European History). His grasp of these concepts was solid, and he was eager to share his new knowledge of how the past has come to inform our present (he&#8217;s got some pretty well-informed opinions). \u00a0I found myself listening carefully, learning things I hadn&#8217;t known. \u00a0Over pancakes and omelets, we asked questions (but not too many), had some laughs, got a pretty good glimpse of what&#8217;s going on in our younger son&#8217;s mind these days.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I&#8217;d written him a long birthday letter, for which I&#8217;d been mercilessly teased (I&#8217;m accused of going on and on in these annual missives), and so I&#8217;d already said how proud I am to be his mom, how glad I am that he&#8217;s happy, thriving, working hard in school. \u00a0So we didn&#8217;t talk about any of that stuff at breakfast, or make much of the fact that his sixteenth year has been a rather wild ride. \u00a0A year ago, his dad and I were really worried about him, and he was really mad at us. \u00a0He spent his birthday weekend at a friend&#8217;s house. \u00a0That weekend, I was half relieved to get a break from the fighting and half heartbroken that, for the first time ever, \u00a0we weren&#8217;t together on his birthday, blowing out candles and offering him our wishes for the year to come. \u00a0I did make a wish of my own, though.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>What I yearned for a year ago was exactly what we had yesterday&#8211;togetherness, love, laughter, a solid sense of connection in the present and faith in the future. \u00a0In the afternoon, Steve and Jack hit some tennis balls&#8211;it was 70 degrees outside, tee-shirt weather&#8211;while I sat on the grass by the courts and read a book. \u00a0The two of them are well matched, but yesterday wasn&#8217;t about who could beat who, it was just two guys who love to play and who enjoy one another&#8217;s company. \u00a0I got to watch, and listen as they complimented each other&#8217;s best shots. \u00a0The sun shone. \u00a0My husband and my son played with the grace and good humor you&#8217;d expect from two good friends, but not necessarily from a teenaged boy and his father. \u00a0They whacked the ball hard, returned it again and again, reveled in their dance. \u00a0I lay my book down, kicked back, and closed my eyes, listening to the sound of the ball, the laughter. \u00a0Sometimes, wishes do come true.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My baby turned seventeen yesterday. \u00a0Of course, he hasn&#8217;t been a baby for a very long time, and yet, because he is my youngest, I can&#8217;t help but think of him that way. \u00a0Even now. \u00a0Even though he is six feet tall, doing math that is far beyond my comprehension, and creating a life in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,8,9,10],"tags":[85,133,301,387],"class_list":{"0":"post-172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-family-life","8":"category-parenting","9":"category-parenting-boys-parenting","10":"category-parenting-teens","11":"tag-birthday","12":"tag-connection-2","13":"tag-motherhood","14":"tag-sons","15":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/600x600.png?fit=600%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}