Vomit in my hair on school picture day. Calls from the counselor about things that were technically not against the rules but were definitely against the spirit of them. A broken arm from what Jax described as “flipping off the shed, but in a cool way,” which I chose not to examine too closely once the cast was on and the x-rays came back clean. If there’s a mess in this house, I have probably cleaned it up. If there is a problem that starts with someone in this house making a questionable decision, I have probably received the phone call.
I have two kids. Lily is nineteen, in college, the kind of student whose essays get used as examples and whose teachers email me unprompted to say what a pleasure she is. She was the child who reminded me about permission slips. She color-coded her notes in middle school by subject and by date, which I did not ask her to do and was slightly alarmed by but chose to interpret as a positive sign.
And then there is Jax.
Jax is sixteen. Jax is full-on punk, not kind-of-alternative, not “going through a phase,” not “expressing himself” in the carefully managed way that reassures other parents at school events. Full-on. Bright pink spiky hair that stands straight up, shaved on the sides, piercings in his lip and eyebrow, a leather jacket that has absorbed so many layers of his gym bag and cheap body spray that it has developed its own ecosystem. Combat boots. Band shirts with skulls on them that I have made my peace with not reading too carefully.
