Don't You Know?

On nearly 24 years of marriage and parenting teens and a train that won't leave

Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise”

It’s late, long after I normally go to bed, but my mind is coasting here and there, thinking back over the last two weeks of vacation and time on the road and my writing life. Our oldest turns 20 years old in less than a week, and if that isn’t cause for an existential crisis, I’m not sure what is. Our oldest two will both be in college this fall, attending the school where Maile and I fell in love 26 years ago. Our marriage, this ever-spinning, always changing, constantly saying “I do” over and over again, turns 24 this summer.

Among the sound of the box fans bringing in cool night air and the muffled sound of my middle son in the living room playing video games with friends are the soft steps of our dog Winnie as she comes into the office looking at me with a look that says, “What in God’s earth are you doing in here at this time of night?” And then she shakes her head at me and pads softly past, lying quietly on the carpet, sighing loudly, registering her disapproval, and closing her eyes. José González croons softly in the background:

Sometimes there's things a man cannot know
The gears won't turn and the leaves won't grow
There's no place to run and no gasoline
Engine won't turn and the train won't leave
Engines won't turn and the train won't leave

I feel that in my bones, the engine not turning, the train not leaving. The stories sitting in my mind, waiting. The books on my side table giving me the side-eye. Another day passes, and not another word written, not another word read.

My cup of tea grows cold.

---

There’s a stage of parenting few people talk about in great detail and that’s the parenting of teenagers. I remember the bone-wearying days of rocking babies to sleep in the middle of the night, the jaw-splitting yawns, the tiredness that ached in my bones when they were all little and not sleeping. That milky smell and the softness of their cheeks and toothless grins. And I did what you’re not supposed to do, I wished those days away, wished they would be older so we could all sleep in on Saturdays and they could snag their own breakfast.

So here we are. Those days are somehow behind us. And yet. Parenting teenagers is the absolute hardest, most heart-breakingly wonderful thing I’ve ever been tasked to do in my entire life. Please hear me: this isn’t me saying to parents of toddlers, “Oh, you think you have it tough now? Just wait!” That’s not what I’m saying at all, because I love my teens and I love parenting them, all four of them, and there is nothing like having an intellectually stimulating conversation with a young person you’ve seen grow up all the way from babyhood. But there is a level of emotional care, love, and deep, gut-wrenching pain that goes into living with young adults that I never could have foreseen.

When they were small, my child’s bad choice resulted in a skinned knee or a timeout. Now, my child’s bad choice could lead to major disappointment for them, a DUI, an overdose, serious emotional trauma (theirs or someone else’s), a future they cannot escape from, or some other life-altering consequence. I am forever praying against unintended consequences, because the universe is not just.

But we can not write about this in detail, not like we wrote about them when they were up in the night or saying silly things as toddlers, because now they are young adults with lives to live, lives that extend far beyond our own, lives in which they deserve their own privacy, lives in which they deserve to tell their own stories.¹

All of us enjoying Jeni’s Ice Cream, some of the best I’ve ever had.

There was a time during our vacation when two of these teens decided to swim out to a sandbar fifty yards from the beach. I watched, sitting in the sun. Their heads bobbed up and down, disappearing behind the waves, appearing again. A few times I thought they might need help, and I stood up, took a step closer to the water. But there they were, arriving on the distant, nearly invisible sand, standing up, the water now only up to their knees, and they were waving with both hands, as if trying to flag me down, wanting me to see just how far they had gone.

See, Dad. We knew we could do it. Look at us!

I stood on the beach and shook my head, smiled to myself, raised both arms and waved long, slow waves, my hands wide, as if trying to hug the entire ocean. That’s what it feels like, raising teens: trying to hug the entire ocean.

---

This is life, all of it, or much of it: the good days of marriage; waiting up some nights until the wee hours just to hear your child’s car arrive and the front door open and close; sometimes wondering what has happened to your writing life; the difficult days of marriage when it feels like there’s a gulf opening at your feet; talking with teenagers about things you never thought you’d have to talk about; getting a story idea; lying in bed with your spouse and listening to their breath; and then slipping downstairs after everyone else is asleep, only to write, joined by José González:

Don't you know that
I'll be around to guide you?
Through your weakest moments
To leave them behind you
Returning nightmares
Only shadows

We'll cast some light and you'll be alright

We'll cast some light and you'll be alright
For now

1. One exception to this rule is a beautiful book by my good friend Katie James, A Prayer for Orion: A Son’s Addiction and a Mother’s Love