Back when Huck was a drunk toddler, Troy and I were his educators.  I hung on his every word because I could understand everything he said.  I still knew more than he did back in those days.  As we’ve watched him morph into this long haired skinny person with ideas and interests far from our own, I quickly learned how to go to my happy place when his Minecraft Monologues began.  Sometimes I’ve missed important information along the way.

On Easter Sunday our friend asked Huck how school was going, and for whatever reason he didn’t dismiss the oft asked question with a quick “fine” but instead gave a detailed and articulate description of a presentation he was working on for his GT class.  I learned a lot in those seven minutes, and it struck me that I need to ask more questions and really listen to his answers.  Not the parental multi-tasking “uh-huh, uh-huh, neat!” kind of listening that I’ve mastered since he turned into a non-stop talker of things I don’t so much understand, but that deep kind of listening we all love from other people.  So I started last week with a secret promise to really listen-listen to all of his many words.  Since he’s the product of two very verbal parents, this is sometimes painful and never quick.  Plus he discovered Pokemon at the exact same time as I made my promise, so a lot of what I must listen to now involves Japanese words I can’t remember and complicated theories that make me drowsy.  That said, I almost always crush him when we play Pokemon.

When Huck and I discover something we both have an affinity for, it takes us back to those early years and reminds us we’re related.  He may go on a little too long about Pi for my taste, and I may talk too much about God, gay rights and the importance of voting for Hilary Clinton, but together we have Harry Potter, time travel, optical illusions, Rebecca Stead books, bubble gum, and variations on Solitaire.  When he was a baby Troy and I worried he might grow up to be an athlete, Republican or atheist.  No offense to our athletic Republican atheist friends and family, but what would we do with a child so different from us?  Instead he is clearly becoming an agnostic mathematician who hates theatre and is about a year away from hosting Dungeons and Dragons meetings in our creepy basement.  We’re like the parents on “Family Ties,” nervously smiling as he launches into a speech far from anything we would ever say, frantically Googling words when he’s not looking.

Our baby’s ten years old and starts middle school in four months.  I think it’s safe to say he’s becoming his own person with his own hair do.  Here’s hoping I keep listening to what he has to say.