By NICK CHILES

It is something we parents can’t help. We look at our children, at their personality quirks and quivers, and we can’t help playing the game of projecting them into the future, like the sci-fi movie “Jumper.” What will she be like when she’s 30? How outgoing will he be when he’s 21? What kind of mother will she be at 35? Will he be able to survive in the workplace at 25?
If you are living in a household with growing girls, as we are, you sometimes scare yourself to death by asking, What will she be like as a teenager? In other words, Will my sweet little girl turn into a monster in just 4 or 5 years?

I was moved to do the Personality Projection Game recently because of changes I’ve noticed in my oldest. Changes to the good, in fact. Changes that hearten me as I look forward to going through teenhood two more times with the girls after the boy is on to college next year. When the boy was 13 and 14 and 15, I would mourn the loss of the personality he had possessed for most of the previous decade. Gone was the engaging, personable, funny, irrepressible little 6-year-old whose ebullient personality was so over the top, who was so outgoing and fun-loving that our neighbors on the block where we used to live in New Jersey took to calling him “The Mayor” because he wouldn’t hesitate to march up to any stranger and start the charm offensive. Back then when we did the Personality Projection, we easily imagined the boy as the first black president, or maybe a senator or CEO.

But then the early teen years came. They snatched the smiling social butterfly away in an instant and replaced him with Surly Boy. This kid was full of grunts and scowls and grimaces. Smiles were rationed like beef during wartime. He wasn’t a lot of fun to be around—which was on purpose, because he preferred to spend most of his time around his friends, anyway. During these years, I was afraid to even play the Projection Game—but when I slipped up and let my mind wander in that direction, I’d wind up pegging him as perhaps a future corrections officer (he’s my boy, so I could never allow myself to think inmate).

Well, after those years of life with Surly Boy, I’m pleased to report a promising development: after the boy turned 16, we noticed glimmers of The Mayor returning. The sense of humor was back, as was the smile and the charm (sometimes). He didn’t even seem to mind spending time with the family. The Projections have started to get good again. Perhaps all will be right with the world, after all. Lesson learned? Perhaps we shouldn’t freak out too much about those early teen years. We should expect a (hopefully) brief invasion of the body snatcher, knowing that the sweetness will likely come back.

These are soothing thoughts as I notice the 10-year-old girl start throwing scowls around a little too much for our tastes. Uh oh, we can’t help but think. How bad is she going to be at 14? Will she even acknowledge our presence at 15?

And we remind ourselves: Trouble don’t last always.

About Our MBB Contributor:
Nick Chiles, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is the author of six books, and the editor-in-chief of the travel magazine, Odyssey Couleur.

By NICK CHILES

Nobody told me it would be like this. Sure, I knew that when my teenage son got his license and we put together enough pennies to get him something with four wheels and a running (hopefully) engine, that I would lose a certain amount of control over the boy’s movements. After all, up to this point, I was the official Dad Taxi, responsible for carting the boy to and from football practice, and the job, and his friend’s house, and even to and from the mall or the movies with his girlfriend of the moment.

I complained bitterly about my taxi duties to anyone who would listen:

I’ll be glad when this boy can drive himself because I’m tired of being the taxicab!

Just when I thought I could rest for the evening, the boy needs another ride somewhere!

Little did I know how much and how quickly I would yearn for the Dad Taxi days. With stunning rapidity, I have discovered how much my life has changed with a teenager who drives. I knew in an abstract way that his mobility would cause me worry because of all those horrible stories and statistics of teenage driving fatalities. We live in a county in Georgia that has horribly deficient, practically non-existent public transportation, with no plans that I’ve ever heard about to rectify the situation anytime soon. So for a teenager to hold a job or do anything outside of the house besides travel to and from school, there has to be a car involved. This necessity leads to the troubling inevitability of teenagers having accidents. It seems like every year, a teenage boy (or girl, but it’s usually boys) at one of the local high schools perishes in a crash. So there’s always that worry in the back of the mind. But that’s not even what I’m talking about. What I didn’t expect was how disconcerting it would be for me to know that the boy is out there in the world, doing whatever it is that he is doing from moment to moment, and there’s barely a damn thing I can do about it.

At first I was Inspector Gadget, peppering him with questions about his movement, checking the football practice schedule on the school website several times a week, frequently eyeing his work schedule at the pool where he’s a lifeguard, trying to catch him doing something he’s not supposed to be doing or being somewhere he’s not supposed to be. I even caught him lying a couple of times, much to his chagrin and embarrassment—his boy told him that I was like a CIA agent. But recently something dawned on me: no matter how hard I tried, it was impossible for me to know where he was and what he was doing every second of the day. And with that realization came another one: if I couldn’t know what he was doing at all times, I was going to have to chill out a little about his whereabouts or else give myself a stroke. I was going to have to have a certain amount of trust in the idea that we did a pretty good job raising him, instilling values and judgment and decision-making skills, and from this point, just weeks from his 17th birthday, it was pretty much up to him to make his way safely in this world.

Of course, I was haunted by the memories of how much my life changed when I got wheels as a teenager—memories of things I did that I shouldn’t have been doing. My momma might be reading this, so I won’t go into further detail. (It was nearly 30 years ago, so I’m sure I would get all the details wrong. Okay, Ma?) But I guess I turned out alright after all, and those teenage days, even the crazier ones, all contributed mightily to my path and the choices I came to make over the years.

So as I watch him load his lineman’s bulk into his Jeep and take off with a wave in my direction, I know that we have crossed a major milestone in the parent-child relationship. Without control over his movements, I have relinquished a great deal of my authority. It is now in his hands, the power to make his own path. All I can do is sit back and watch. And breathe another deep sigh of relief with the sound of his squeaky brakes pulling back into the driveway.

About Our MBB Contributor:
Nick Chiles, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is the author of six books, and the editor-in-chief of the travel magazine, Odyssey Couleur.

By NICK CHILES

Like an all-powerful deity, she hovers over our lives from the very first breath we take. She feeds us, nurtures us, becomes irreversibly imprinted on our souls. Before we have the power to select or to resist, she becomes our lifelong muse.

As a writer, I take the idea of the muse very seriously. The ancient Greeks knew what they were talking about when they created the goddesses of artistic inspiration. It is the force that pushes me to tap the keyboard, to keep the words flowing, the thoughts brewing. Without a muse, my screen is blank. I am nothing.

But the power of my motherly muse has always extended beyond the computer screen. One day it dawned on me that her power actually had no limits. It was elemental to my life. In essence, since the day I was born, everything I have ever done has been with the sole intent of pleasing my mother.

And I don’t think I’m all that unusual. I think most of us, if we step up to our reflection and grapple with the truth, will admit that she continues to compel us, no matter our age or station in life. When the game is over, the curtain is drawn, the award is presented, she is the first place we run. The glory of accomplishment isn’t real until we share it with her. Even if it’s just a thought deep in the recesses, an impulse that we don’t immediately act upon, it’s there: I need to tell my mother.

So what it all means is this: she is the Earth’s most powerful force, the humanly equivalent of the Sun, providing the planet’s inhabitants with the energy to keep this thing going. If we could trace the source of human triumph, the key to our greatest discoveries, our most remarkable victories over the mysteries that confound us, the cord would lead us all directly to Mommy.

This is not to say that each of them are perfect—surely there have been mothers over time in need of a few maternal remediation classes. But that proves the enormity of her power—even when she is bad at her job, she casts a monstrous shadow. The bad mother creating the bad person is one of the most enduring of our well-worn crime narratives.

But, oh, when she is on her game, when the mom goddess is a maestro directing her charges to greatness, it is like a gift to every one of us. Inspired by the motherly muse, that boy grows up to find a cure for AIDS, that little girl grows into the greatest writer of a generation. And of course when that superstar wide receiver catches the winning touchdown pass, we all know the first person he will thank.

But let me not get too abstract here. I tend to get a bit carried away when the topic is moms. I am still amazed by the influence mine has over me, 43 years into my time here. By now it has become clear to me that the influence never wanes. Even when I am not thinking about her directly, her words, her voice, her conscience, her wishes, her dreams, are directing my actions, moving my feet to walk into my child’s room to have that serious talk, pushing my hands to help the old lady load her groceries into her car, forcing my fingers to fly over the keyboard to finish that great book proposal. I couldn’t shake her even if I wanted. She occupies a part of my brain, resting sometimes, prodding at other times. So I have begun to think of us as a team, my mother and me. We have been confronting every challenge for the past 43 years. Kicking ass together. No matter how many more years we have together on this mortal coil, I know that she will never be gone from me. I will never be without my muse. To you, mother, I say thank you. I love you.

And to the rest of you mothers out there, as you accept your Mother’s Day gifts and smile until your face hurts, know this: You are the most important person in every one of our lives. You are the Sun.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!

With love,

MyBrownBaby