Will You Still Love Him When He's Big?

Will you still see him when he's big?

Like any parent, there's a whole stream of stuff that keeps me up at night. School. How many fruits and veggies qualify as enough. Doctor's appointments. Bullies. Whether my kid's tattered sneakers can make it through the summer since I know any new pair I buy will just become mud-encrusted threads before school starts again because have you met him?

But mostly, what keeps me up at night is wondering if you will still love my son when he is big.

Junior still gets a pretty big pass in public, because people still think he's so much younger than what he is -- four is the age that most people guess, although that blows my mind because the child has gotten huge. I used to simply think that people would say, "How old are you? Are you four?" because he was a peanut, but as he hits growth spurt after growth spurt, officially leaving toddler sizes behind and with no end in sight, I have realized that it wasn't his size, because still, people ask, "Are you four? Or are you five?"

"He's six," I say out loud, tacking on the "and-a-half," in my mind, because at this age, six months still makes a difference and I know they think he's younger because of his speech, because of his mannerisms, and because right now, he's still small enough to be, well, small.

But he won't always be little. And I worry.

Will you manage not to laugh or dismiss him when he begins to monotonously repeat the phrase, "I'm a little torso," or counters what you say with, "My muscles are blue," or gags over the texture of something that brushes against him, or misinterprets something you said because he is so literal when he is a gangly, pimples-erupting, braces-wearing, awkward 15-year-old?

Will you still think he's quirky and precious when he's preseverating on a topic at age 17, when other kids his age are dating, and he can't stop obsessing over ocean depths? When other kids are going to concerts and to dances and he's at  home, watching an endless stream of documentaries -- will you still stop to listen to him as he breathlessly tells you every single piece of information he knows about hornets when he's a junior in high school?

Will you still be gentle when he finds himself in a situation that is too stimulating, and he struggles to get his words out because overstimulation causes him to stutter so badly that it renders him nearly inarticulate, when he's 20? Will you have the patience, then, to listen to a grown man try to speak, even when it's clearly painful for him to try, and certainly painful to listen?

Raising Junior has made me so aware of the men and women on the fringes of society. The odd ones. The ones who wear weird clothes but not in a cool way, who mumble to themselves as they shop, who may be stimming in the parking lot, who shuffle rather than walk, who make odd statements apropos of nothing, the ones who are making it on their own, who have their independence...but remain on the edges because we make a wide berth around them. Because they are different.

But because of Junior, I am acutely aware of them. I ask a question - do you know where the soup is? What kind of phone is that? It's really hot today, isn't it?

But what I am saying is, I see you, I see you, I see you.

Because I worry. I worry that, as Junior grows bigger, he may actually grow smaller.

Will you still love him when he is big?

Because a mother's love, while deep, is narrow, and I worry it won't be enough. I know it won't be enough.

That's what keeps me up at night.