Come out, come out, where ever you are!
My son came out to me to me in the middle of his senior year of high school.
I had just gotten to my seat on a plane, and knew my window to reply to him was short. If I didn’t reply within a few minutes, it would be hours. And who knows how waiting hours for a reply would make him feel? I didn’t want to find out. That much, I knew.
Not wanting him to think I was horrified or ignoring him, but with little time to think and plan, I went with, I love you. Just boarded a plane, talk to you when I land.
But let’s rewind the clock.
Jonah was 17 at the time, but I am going to rewind 18 years.
Jonah was my younger child by three years. He got the benefit of my already being in the routine of motherhood, and knowing the major do’s and don’ts of kid life.
When his brother was three, I would pick him up from daycare and head home to cook dinner. While I was getting dinner ready, he would head straight to the hallway and throw a football down the hall over and over.
If he couldn’t find a football, a pillow would do.
No pillow? A shoe would do just as well. Anything in that child’s hands became a ball. He lived and breathed typical boy stuff!
I was a young mother, naïve in my ways, and assumed this was what all boys did. When my second child was born, I thought this was simply Boy Child, Chapter Two.
Three years later, I find myself in the same place with Jonah – straight from work to pick up my boys and head home.
Micah, still one for sports, had progressed into going outside to play, where he could throw the ball further. Maybe a little game of catch with a friend. Just anything sports-related would do.
Jonah was now the age Micah was when he started throwing the ball down the hallway.
Jonah would make a beeline to my bedroom, take off all his clothes, put on mine, grab a matching purse, and come visit with me while I cooked – usually telling me how soft or pretty my clothes were.
None of those typical boy things interested him.
So this wasn’t Boy Child, Chapter Two . This was Jonah, Chapter One.
Fast forward back to Jonah texting me at 17, and I can’t really tell you I was surprised. We were many chapters deep into the story of his life by this point.
It wasn’t because he loved my clothes, but because I paid attention during those 17 years of his life. I noted the ways he was different from his bother – not a bad different. Just different.
I was just waiting for him to tell me, so we could begin the next chapter of our lives. The chapters where Jonah didn’t have to pretend he was something he wasn’t.
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