It is your birthday tomorrow. Twelve years old. I am wondering what cake to buy for your birthday. I really want to get it right. Not long ago, a Tardis or football-shaped cake would have been the easy choice, but those days are behind us.
I am considering a photo cake – I have a photo of us from when you were small. It shows us smiling together, in a time when affection was easy between us and you weren't uncomfortable showing you loved me. I think the cake would be lovely, but I'm worried you will sigh and tut with the impatient disapproval I am becoming all too familiar with.
The past year has been one of much change for you, and for our relationship. You have moved from the safety and confines of life in primary school to the freedom and plethora of influences that is high school. You have made new friends, had your first detention, started asking to go out on your own.
You are now happy to stay in the house on your own while I go out, something that should give me more freedom … but only brings me new worries. Your life is expanding beyond the familiar circle of childhood friends, whose parents I am on first-name terms with.
Just six months ago, you were worried about getting the bus to school on your own. Now, you want to use the bus every weekend to go and visit new friends. Friends I don't know, with parents I have never met, who live in houses I will never visit.
A year ago, school holidays would have been filled with getting up early and wondering what to do together. Now, they are filled with the expectation of you sleeping late and spending the afternoon locked in a room staring at a video game. I can't seem to find an activity that we could do together that isn't "lame". This time last year, you would still hold my hand when we went out for walks. Now, the mere mention of a walk brings eye-rolling and complaining. You used to accept my advice and warnings, listen to me carefully, and consider me the font of knowledge. Now I am seemingly the one person that doesn't understand you.
You have even got a girlfriend. I have yet to meet her, but I have seen pictures of you and her smiling at each other on your Facebook page. The one I have just discovered you have "unfriended" me from.
I have found texts on your phone where you have told her you love her and that she is your life. The blow that came from reading this was my payback for snooping on your phone, but it was devastating to see in black and white that I am no longer the most important woman in your life.
I never thought I would be one of those mothers that did not want theirchildren to grow up. But I'm not ready.
I expected you to grow up. I expected you to grow away from me. I just didn't expect it to happen this soon. Or that it would hurt so much. I just want my little boy back.
Still, I will never burden you with this old-woman nonsense. I will probably play it safe and buy you the chocolate tray bake.
Happy birthday, my darling boy.
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