. colton

[colton abernathy]

c o l t o n   g r a y s o n

"it's curious that physical courage should be so
common in the world and moral courage so rare."

[colton abernathy]

YOU LIVE YOUR LIFE, YOU GO IN SHADOWS There had always been a part of me that had hoped Heidi and Mel would have boys, too. I thought of Heidi's brothers, imagined our three roughhousing together, riding their bikes down to the beach, sticking gum in the hair of girls they liked. Then came Ruby, whose blue eyed perfectness distracted me from that thought, and then Mirren, who shared in Ruby's gorgeous perfection, but brought with her a small sense of dread: at some point, Colton would notice that they were girls. I brought him to the hospital to meet Mirren not long after she was born, his toddler self so much more interested in this new pseudo sibling than he ever has been in his actual sisters. I started to forget about it. Last summer I realized that time had been and gone without my immediate noticing. Only seeing Colton during holidays and rare visits means I'm sometimes as surprised as anyone by his shifts in appearance, how one holiday I'm seeing him and he looks like a gangly teen, then summer rolls round and suddenly he's tanned, muscled, looking so much more like a man. It's unsettling. There's a latent threat with all men, derived from their being men, no matter how gentle their nature. With Colt there's the secretiveness, so furtive all the time-- it hurts me as his mother, but it does make me wonder what impact it has on his relationships, friendly and otherwise. It's healthy to keep things from your mother, of course. But I have tried to get insights from Mira and Ruby, stealthily slipping in questions about his personal life or just outright begging them to tell me what they think. I get the impression they don't know much more than I do. But last summer. That was the first time I looked for my son the teenager and found my son the man. Taller, broader, stronger... he still had flashes of childishness, but that's when he really started to commit to being an adult. Or at least his idea of what that looked like, which was mostly a brooding and sullen version of adulthood. After a brief conversation about dinner in the doorway of his bedroom, I had made it halfway down the stairs before I remembered something else I wanted to mention to him, I forget now what it was. Viewing it as a continuation of a conversation and not a conversation anew, I committed the cardinal sin of parenting and I opened the door without knocking. That's when I saw him. You're likely picturing something much worse than the reality (I had only just left, remember), but all he was doing was looking out the window... down where Mira sat sunbathing, her legs so long and bronze against the white of the lounger. He was looking with something that made my stomach flip; he was looking with a hunger that I hadn't ever seen in him before. That sounds dramatic, I know. A teenage boy looking at a teenage girl in a bikini with lust, it's hardly shocking. But it brought back that pit in my stomach from all those years ago. It's not that I think Colton is a threat in any way, please God, don't think this is about him. It's about them. About their shared beauty and their history of intimacy, and how inevitably that line will be blurred. It's about a ticking time bomb that threatens their friendship in a way we never had to worry about. It scares me not because Colt is a risk but because that friendship is all he has to tether him to me, to anything, really. Boys his age aren't known for making the most rational decisions in the face of pretty girls, and I hope he can let cooler heads prevail, because he stands to lose so much. This summer Mira has a boyfriend, which helps. But I've seen the way he glances at Ruby across the dining table, the way she lets her hand swing close to his when they are walking up to the house. It's taking everything in me not to intervene but look at what happened with NYU? Maybe if I endorse the relationship that will put him off.. oh, what am I saying, it's none of my business. I just hope it all works out, and if it doesn't, I really hope it's not all his fault.