Ekbeh | From the Bayou to the Big Screen – March 2024
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You Are What You Eat – Healthy Food Choices Build Healthy Bodies
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I read words written eight years ago, and they made me cry. They were my own words, written by a younger me. Still the same me, but different in so many ways.
The article started like this:
“Tonight, I laid down with my middle son. He’s right smack in the middle of our family…. The truest middle child if there ever was one.”
He was nine when I wrote those words. He’s 17, now. It’s been years since he asked me to lie down with him for a few minutes before bedtime. Every now and again, I still go upstairs, brave the bedroom inhabited by (slightly disgusting) teenage boys and attempt to recreate the moments I remember so well from his childhood. Instead of being welcomed, I usually get something that sounds like this: “Bruh, why are you in my bedroom?”
Nine years ago, I said this about his request for me to lie with him for a few minutes so he could “just talk about his day.”
“So I lay down with him for a few minutes in the bottom bunk bed, as he told me of the book he was reading, his soccer practice, and why his sisters aggravate him so much. Nothing important, but it was his world. And I felt honored to be a part for the few minutes I lay there, listening.”
And here’s the thing. Nine years later, braving a teenage bedroom and a few comments loaded with “bruhs,” I’m still honored to be a part of his life. The words trickle out a little slower, and sometimes I’m asking questions and getting one-word answers. But the truth I wrote nine years ago: “time stands still at the bottom of a bunk bed” still holds true today. Everything else stops, and we connect again. Sometimes it’s our first time connecting all day. He leaves the house at 6:30 a.m. and often doesn’t come home until well after dark.
It’s not even about what I’m saying. One thing I know for sure after parenting for almost 20 years is this: He probably won’t remember a single thing I say. But he will remember me walking up to his room, aggravating him until he lets me lay next to him, and talking for a few minutes out of a very busy day.
“I don’t really have anything to say that seems to matter,” I want to whisper into his heart. “I have nothing to say, yet everything.”
Today, someone asked me about my children. One in college, the rest in high school and one 8th grader, I replied. “Ooooh, you’re right in the heat of it all” was the quick response. Yes. I am. Our family is filled with teenagers – headstrong, trying fiercely to be independent, making decisions without us, driving on their own.
But when I compare the younger years to these, some things remain the same. A few minutes together at the end of the day comes a long way in helping everyone feel just a little more together. We might be all on our own, doing our own thing, throughout the day but you aren’t alone. That’s the message being communicated even when we aren’t talking. Because silence has its place too.
But I don’t say anything. Instead, we both just stare at the underneath of his brother’s bunk bed for a while.
Maybe silence sometimes communicates more than our millions of words ever will. Because he looked at me, and smiled.
“It was a good day, wasn’t it, mom?”
“Why yes. Yes it was.”
Good days become great when we are together. That was true back then, and it’s still true now. Time spent together is time well spent. Even if it’s a few minutes at the bottom of a bunk.
