He doesn’t look the same as he did even a few weeks ago. Sure, there are similarities, gestures, the same eyes, but the shape of his cheeks has changed, drawn a little longer. He also outgrew his new pj’s, purchased about 5 weeks ago. Ever since he’s known me, I’ve pretty much looked the same [thanks to a decent gym membership and Betty and Anjonette, my fabulous stylist/colorist team]. But I know that can’t be true either, as I look at my mother and realize that she no longer looks like the Mom I remember from being a kid. Of course, she looks exactly like my mother, but also not. Same with my son. He’s exactly my guy, only older and taller and thinner and sometimes, even, with a phrase or expression or tilt of his head I’ve never seen before. Him, and not him. I can barely remember his baby years without the aid of pictures; his toddler and preschool years are mostly absent from my mind but come colliding back when I look back over photos or someone tells a story about him then.
It’s odd to have a constantly-revised vision/version of him and yet feel myself as constant. But that can’t be true – my knees creak and make all sorts of sounds, my skin and muscle tone are clearly different from when I hit my “permanent” inner age, of about 26. That’s how old I feel inside and it’s terribly embarrassing to be recalled to my real age by a mirror, a look from someone else, or the presence of someone actually in their 20’s, who humors me with politeness but doesn’t really think I have anything of value to contribute. And this inner age predates my motherhood, so just that alone ought to knock some sense into my inward identity, but no, it hasn’t really. So I think I just move ahead and back across the continuum of my years, and can be or feel or remember just about any age (even my authentic one).
But what about my son? To me, he moves only forward, and each change in his personality and appearance morphs over his former selves. I have joyously and fully loved all of the sons he has been to me, but I grieve for the many that seem to have vanished, at least until something jars me to a memory and I can recall him younger. Sometimes, after he’s gone to bed, I peruse for hours the digital images of him that now live locked away on my computer. I can glimpse him there, or on the photos all over the house, and if I look long enough, I can remember the feel of him when he was smaller, where his body nuzzled next to mine, how much of him I could hold in my arms, the smell of his hair and his skin, the sound of his voice, the mispronunciations he announced with total certainty, his laughter.
Soon I will be an old woman to his permanent inner self, the age at which he will always see himself despite evidence to the contrary. And overnight he’ll wonder where the mother he remembers went, and how I became this graying, slow-moving, antiquated version of the Mom he has internalized. And I won’t know where she is, either.
