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A bird flew overhead. He looks young, someone said, probably my husband, because he is the kind of person who notices birds and adds details about them. The bird looked big to me, but someone said he looked small. He appeared to crash land on a tree, which I think was actually probably a fine landing, but the speed of the landing made the top of the tree flail dramatically. Maybe the bird was still learning how to land gracefully. I think it’s an immature eagle, my friend Christine said, and then she laughed and added, which I used to call “amateur eagles”.
We were three adults hanging out at the beach. The amateur eagle was brown. It was indeed young, so it was being an eagle for fun, not professionally, lol. I’m not a Bird Person, so if I had been alone I probably would have mistaken the eagle as just a really brown and really big seagull or something. It did not look like a bald eagle to me at all. But, of course birds, like all animals, have to grow into their adultness just like you or I. And so their sizes bloom and their colors change and their skills develop, and it’s not overnight but they slowly transform as they mature.
I’m having a problem right now which is that my son is seventeen, transforming before my very eyes, but I am an amateur mom so I keep getting his size mixed up. Sometimes I think he looks too big: for example this summer he is apparently growing or attempting to grow a mustache and a thing I learned is that when your baby boy grows or attempts to grow a mustache you are not supposed to gaze at their face for five seconds, wave your hand in a circle, and say what’s happening here? Sometimes I think he looks too small: legally he has a permit but I’m the parent who does not yet ride with him because cars are big hunks of metal and they move at variable speeds? and are dangerous? so, children aren’t supposed to drive them? But if I stop to think with my adult brain I realize that there is a very real possibility that we’re approaching our last year in the nest together. Soon he might…mature. And just drive away without me. If I really linger with that thought, my feelings start to molt and I’m so ruffled I could fly into a wall. So what I think I’m doing is not thinking, and in my amateur not thinking, I keep crash landing into my son.
Are you okay? he asked me some months ago, mouth full, during dinner. This was before the mustache. But I was again staring at him, and I had not yet taken a bite of food. For the first time in a million spaghetti dinners across seventeen years, I found myself suddenly and urgently horrified, watching him shovel the noodles into his mouth. Sometimes, and I’m not exaggerating, there would still be noodles hanging out of his mouth as he added more. I’m just worried, I said, that I never taught you how to eat spaghetti.
Who cares, he said. Well one day you might be at a job interview and you wouldn't want an employer to see you eat spaghetti like that, I said. Why would I be eating dinner at a job interview? he said and I said sometimes you eat dinner with people who might hire you and he said well I wouldn’t order spaghetti
and he has everything figured out, so he is not open to feedback. I am not sure what my precise window was to teach the spaghetti thing, but it has closed.
The fear that all the windows are closing or have already closed is only making me worse. I’m growing or attempting to grow an eagle and, honestly, I am so annoying. I used to be such a fun mom; I think. The eagle is a sweetheart. He is capable, handsome, and majestic, and he remembers and is genuinely interested in literally everyone, so each week someone texts me to say they ran into him and can’t believe how mature he is. Meanwhile, I’m nitpicking about spaghetti and whether he says thank you to his grandma and even though he wears a tie to work and knows the capital transit schedule better than I do, I still looked at the kitchen clock this morning and said, Don’t you need to go catch the bus? The words just flew out before I could stop myself and the top of our house flailed ever so slightly. The question hanging out of my mouth like a clump of noodles. My son, bless his heart, took a breath and said, Yeah I was just about to leave.
He was just about to leave, that’s what he said. He is just about to leave. He is tying his shoes. I look back at the clock and I want to take it down. I want to slow the transformation. Is it the spaghetti or is it that I mistake his flight for falling, and I absurdly keep leaping across the table to catch him? I reach, grasping, fist full of brown feathers. My beautiful son. My amateur eagle. And his amateur mom.
At its root, you know, it means one who loves.
I’m still learning. Our tree sways as I land in it
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