So that’s what can happen to a boy in just four years. In one photo, you can still see the toddler he was once; in the other, the young man he will become. In the meantime, he’s in that adolescent purgatory of no longer being the little kid you can coddle, and not yet the young man you can throw the car keys to. Even though we parents think they have it soft compared to the way it was for us, it’s a really tough age–all awkwardness, arms and legs akimbo, raging hormones, and temptations to try things that strike terror to the heart.
The keel and compass for weathering such stormy seas comes from the time spent with Dad. That’s just as good at 14 as it was at 11, even if he sometimes bores the living daylights out of the poor kid. That’s mostly a joke. All parents bore their adolescent, teen kids. The fact that Dad’s out here spending time with him is what counts. It’s what will stick.
I had a Dad who did such things with me. I hope you did too. Happy Father’s Day, F. Carl Mahoney, father of Eric Mahoney, the kid from Kansas.