growing pain 2

i see a photo of someone's twelve year old son. he's a skinny earnest-looking bespectacled fellow, eating at the table with his elbows propped up and his nose in a paperback. i had a little boy like that once, i think, with a sudden sharp pain that makes me gasp. he's older now. he reads differently. he thinks differently. wit sharpens. innocence darkens. i won't have the gift of that boy again, me with the hopefulness of young motherhood and he with the uncomplicatedness of childhood. 

what i have is older and more damaged. there are depths that you will not know if you do not plumb them in pain, i tell him over the years. i am older and more damaged too. that cheerful sun-drenched path leads unrelentingly to the land of shadows on the way to those depths.