Whitetop Weekend

My dad’s mom suffered Alzheimer’s and dementia at the end of her life, and it seemed she remembered childhood bits, but then there were huge chunks of time missing. I’m not a rock climber, but I believe documenting memories and thoughts is a little like when a climber clips in to a new anchor once they’ve finished a pitch. Not all is lost if they slip up. So here I am, clipping in a minor memory because it all matters. There is glory in climbing to new heights just as there is glory in watching the flowers sway in the wind.

Having a child start middle school has really taken the wind out of my writing sails, and I’ve been scrolling through pictures of the summer seeing all the travels I failed to document here. I know not every weekend getaway is momentous or interesting to my friends, but this also serves as my own memory bank, and it seems that posting snippets of life here slows it down little because I have to pause and remember.

This particular weekend was the last free one before the beach trip that would end out the summer. The boys and I went up on a Wednesday to hang out with Bubba, and Joe came up late Friday night to join us. I talked to Joe for hours until he lost signal as he stretched his way from Raleigh to Wilkesboro then up the winding way to Whitetop. We did the usual things. We rode the Virginia Creeper, we visited the ponies in Grayson Highlands, we played in the water at Creek Junction, and yet it was a weird trip to Whitetop because a lot of reminders about the temporary nature of our time in these bodies hung over us. It’s strange how when the flowers bloom, the solemnity of the heart can’t dampen their beauty, only maybe our ability to see it. It’s the wildflowers seeded by birds, with roots corkscrewing through dusty gravel roads, that are worthy to meet our troubled gaze.

Looking back at these pictures, I’m reminded that childhood itself is as fleeting as a summer blossom. You can see it there in my sons’ eyes – the self-awareness, the adolescence creeping in. If I close my eyes, I just might miss it.

Especially with my oldest in middle school, I find myself longing to nurture the last threads of childhood but also fearing not giving him the tools for this next climb in time. I waffle between carrying him along and giving his rope a little more slack so he can feel his own strength.

I very clearly remember being in my early double digits and Dad commenting that a sparkle was gone from my eyes. It made me sad to hear it, but now seeing life as a parent, I wonder if what he was seeing was childhood in all its ephemeral wonder giving way to that strange self-aware adolescent I was becoming. I was no doubt born self-conscious, but there is a different kind of sadness that entered in when I began to see that I could not remain as I had always had been, that more was expected of me by the world and myself. Some adolescents carry a newfound sense of empowerment, purpose and adventure. I mourned. I bet if I were to ask my boys if they are sad about growing up, they might would look at me like I am crazy.

This is currently the biggest lesson I’m learning – my sadness is not theirs. My anxiety is not theirs. My standards and self-scrutiny are not theirs. I posted this the other morning:

This season of watching my boys enter adolescence is really awakening some of my own deep-seated insecurities from that time in my life of always feeling like an outsider. I really have to check myself and not parent my boys out of my wounds or project my feelings onto them. My gut reaction is to scoop them up and shun away all the potential hurt, because that’s how I’ve handled my own heart. But that is not love. That is not pointing them towards Jesus… I’m going to take this season as a gift, a chance for redemption and healing.

While all the internal narratives I carry are not shared by my children, if I allow these emotions to run my life, they will latch on to their hearts and rule them as well. Only they will be as a force steering them from their true nature, in a voice they will spend the next four decades of their lives trying to sort out from their own and ultimately from God’s gentle and compelling words of love. I cannot drag them along by a lead rope when they have their own paths to climb. I can’t keep them as a flower in a cloche willing the last petal not to fall before I’m ready.

Someday, the last petals will fall for us all –the last petals of childhood, and if we are blessed to live long lives, the last petals of of our sleepy, golden days eating dinner at 4 pm and staying up late to watch sun set. Don’t close your eyes in fear. Mourn it if you must, but let the passing light of its beauty bend brilliantly through the tears.