The rocks were slick that afternoon and I went first. It was June 2021, and we were on a California beach, my kids and I–walking around the tidepools, peeking into the depths hoping to spot crabs and jellyfish close up, my fascination with watching little critters in the sea as strong as it was when I was a girl reading Enid Blyton, day-dreaming about scrambling on rocks and rowing on a boat to an island that I owned.
It was a sunny day, and the beach was filled with people feeling their way back into the world, as pandemic restrictions lifted, as barbeques and summer parties recommenced, as introverts recalibrated to navigating noise and chaos. The world was rearranging itself into something recognizable again: red beach chairs, kites against a cloudless sky, crowded parking lots. My sixteen year old girl was already off on the other side, taking photographs and sending them to her friends. My thirteen year old boy was behind me. We were out on a summer day, me having taken an uncharacteristic day off work.
I make my way across the rocks. I was busy identifying what I saw in the shallow pockets of sea water, thrilled when I spotted a crab and schools of small fish. But I knew exactly where my son was without even looking, my heart carrying imprints of this moment, and of each of his thirteen years, the squally newborn squatting in the same digs as the young man he was fast becoming.
He was thirteen, and I still went first.
***
When he was three, he was stubborn about keeping the lights on when he slept. He said the monsters would come. I told him mom would keep the monsters away. He seemed unconvinced. I told him monsters were actually nice creatures and we’d invite them for a playdate if they came over.
But he was still worried, and I wanted him to sleep, and we kept the lights on.
When he was five, he would often ask me to sing This Old Man, his new favorite bedtime song. There was often, in those frenetically busy days, a pull towards an urgent email, or at least one that had the illusion of urgency, of the world coming to an end if you didn’t turn in a bug fix by precisely 8.45am the next day. Or the pull towards my comforter, every fibre of me wanting to collapse into its depths, a pinata on the verge of bursting. I love a good counting song as much as the next person, but struggled with its priority against the dual forces of work and self-care,
But I would, mostly, eventually, sing with him.
When he was seven, he labored over a marble run, engineering a multi-level creation that let his marbles in hues of blue and red tumble and cascade down to the ground. He played with it, racing his marbles, talking to himself. And then a crash; the structure collapsed. He cried, distraught. I had that day been fretting over a conflict with my manager, over a fall my mother had taken in her home an ocean away, over a kangaroo costume I’d have to find for a school play.
I started saying that it was no big deal and he could rebuild. But I didn’t. I sat beside him and consoled him as he cried.
Because there would come a time when he’d know there were no monsters, at least not the ones of his imagination; when he would no longer want me to sing with him; when the small boy who cried over a broken marble run would carry so much more.
When he was twelve, he didn’t make a school sports team. He went to his room, and slammed the door. He didn’t want to talk. A hug was rebuffed, a trip to the ice-cream store dismissed. I went back to my room, and threw on my blanket. I pulled up a book, reveling in the complicated lives of the Bridgerton siblings and their suitors, in a world that stayed moored in the pages of my Kindle, its characters steadfast in their companionship. And I fought the fierce loneliness of closed doors, of living in the same house but also not. I was out of fashion, and maybe one day I’d be back in fashion, but right now it was all monosyllables and a slow journey to the periphery of his life.
A few days before our trip to the beach, I walked out to the landing. He was sitting on the step, reading. He would read on the steps, in his bed, and on the ragged sectional downstairs, the one that had over the years moulded to his shape. He would read in the front seat of the car, coming indoors long after we had parked. On that morning, he was absorbed in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, his comfort read.
I sat next to him and ruffled the back of his head, distinctive in its two hair whorls, a feature my mother, the ultimate purveyor of old wives tales, said predicted good fortune. I put my arm around him, preparing for an immediate retraction. But he leaned into me. He was there for me — the way I tried to be for him, and didn’t always manage.
***
On the rocks that day, I turned around, preparing to cross back across to the beach. He was on the rock behind me. I motioned, intending for him to step aside to give me more room. I was eyeing the main beach, mentally calculating how long we’d have before beach traffic set in, and when we could have lunch.
He held out his hand to me. It didn’t register as I looked past him, and spotted my daughter already on the beach near the waves. I felt the familiar anxiety that she’d be swept away, as a teenage boy had been earlier that year.
I looked back at him and realized his hand was still outstretched. He had interpreted my “step-aside’ motion as needing help. Suddenly he was the two year old sitting next to me on the plane and fussing because he wanted to sit with his dad. I asked him who would take care of me if he left. He squeezed my hand tightly and sat with me the whole journey.
The rocks were slick and I was just a middle aged lady with questionable balance, a tendency to get distracted, and the capacity to lose my way going to the neighborhood grocery store.
He was thirteen, tall, lanky, and confident. He had biked or run every street in our neighborhood.
I took his hand, the hand that once gripped mine when we walked, and then strained impatiently wanting to run free. And I let him help me across the rocks.
He was thirteen, and he walked ahead of me.
Author: A former tech industry veteran, Shobana Narasimhan now focuses her time on community work. Her two children recently headed off to college, leaving her Bay Area home to her husband, her father, her cat, and a steadily growing stack of books.
So gorgeous and so poignant
I loved the shift from the uncertainty that I felt in this piece to his taking mother's hand, (and all those life moments in there to his helping mother across the rocks. Nicely done!