.jpg)
A beautiful, innocent boy with little awareness of the outside world, struggling a bit in school, concerned with just having fun -- just the way it should be for any eight-or-10-year-old just figuring out what life's all about.
But in the span of what seems to me as if it was about 10 seconds, he has grown into this...a 14-year-old who now is into girlfriends, who is now almost as tall as me...
...Whose voice is changing and is getting near as deep as mine, who is weary about hugging and kissing me any more but who is still willing to let me hug him, whose shoulders are getting wider...
...Who has a zillion friends and is a year away from high school, who is exploring his interests in singing and art and creativity, who is mobile and more independent and whose body is changing at a mile a minute...
And now, inevitably, it has come to this:
And I had TOLD him about this. I WARNED him. He doesn't live with me full-time, so I said to him, as I and he could see the peach fuzz growing beneath his nose and above his lip, do NOT shave before you talk to me and I can show you how.
Because once you START to shave, you won't be able to stop. You'll be doing this for the rest of your life. But what does he do? He shaves. And he shaves over a zit, and it doesn't look that great. But he recovers. Thankfully, with no permanent emotional or physical scarring.
So on the left is my son's face, after he has shaved, apparently no worse for wear.
On the right is my face, after a day's unshaven growth. I'm sure he figures that he has arrived, as a man.
I figure he has just gotten himself into a lifelong activity that is little more than a pain in the ass. Not an unnecessary pain in the ass, and not without its rewards, but still a pain.
Like father like son, I guess.
