You are 12 and therefore know everything and with opinions about what you should be doing at all times. But I gently ignore all that and pack you off to Boy Scout camp to move rocks and do work that you are not willing to do but don't protest too sharply at.
I think of how you are and if you remember to drink water. Because it's so very hot today and you forget. I figure that no news is good news and you are making it just fine.
And then in the late hours of the night the storm rolls in and the lightning crashes and the thunder booms and shakes the house and I think of my boy in a tent and how you will handle this moment. Will you be afraid? Will you sleep through the whole thing like you did before? Will you run for cover?
I don't know the answer yet. And one day not too long from now I will not know the answer unless you call home. Later today when I pick you up you will tell me how you handled yourself in the storm. But someday the storm will come and you will be a man who takes it as it comes or not. Who has the skills and the strength and the mind to face it or not quite yet. My heart will be walking around out in the world, as they say so blithely. But it doesn't make it easier to know it's coming.
