Reprinted by permission

Last Saturday, for the very first time, I sent my youngest son off to overnight camp. It was a bittersweet moment, as these milestones tend to be, leaving me rather reflective as we drove away. I thought about the passage of time, about the course of his young life, and mostly I realized that certain aspects of his growth are now established beyond my ability to alter them.

If I missed specific opportunities to influence him in those formative years, they will remain missed forever and for some things this is very, very good because I was thinking that there were a few extremely odd things I could have done but didn't.

For one, I didn't train him to make bizarre word choices, as much as I might have found that amusing.

It would have been such a simple tendency to instill too. If, for example, each time I referred to the outside I had called it 'the great outdoors', he would have thought that normal and adopted it as a matter of course. The term is essentially accurate, just unusual for everyday use.

Along those same lines, I could have taught him to call jeans 'long pants', teeth 'mini tusks' and people 'souls'. When asking a question I might have trained him to use the word 'perchance'. But I didn't, even though it's the kind of thing that crosses my mind.

And as long as I'm talking about words, why is it that we still use the term 'landlord'? Isn't that a bit antiquated? Just because someone owns land that they rent out, I don't see why they should be called a 'lord'. If it makes sense that we do, then I think in fairness we should also call other people lords.

The guy pumping my gas could be the 'fuel-lord'. Teachers should be the 'learning-lords'. As the matriarch of my house I think I should be called the 'womb-lord'.

Would that be too strange?

Probably- which is why I restrained myself from saying what I was really thinking before we left my son at camp, and that was, "Be nice to the other souls, don't forget to clean your mini tusks and give your womb-lord a kiss before you head off into the great outdoors."

Instead I just said, "Have fun, kiddo!" and he replied, rather annoyed that we stayed an hour before we left, "I will, I will. Can you go already!"

I have his best interest at heart and he's growing more independent. We both said the right thing.

Crystal

Copyright 2010