Carrie Link

CLARITY

Ever since the day Rojo was born, I knew his story was a story I was born to tell, and so for 13 years I've been trying to figure out a way to tell it. I've started umpteen times to write a book. I've blogged. I've journaled. I've talked the ears off of friends.

My dear, sweet, wise editor and friend said, "The reason you can't write his story, is that he's still living his story."

She was right.

This summer was a weird one for Rojo, and for me. He got braces. He turned 13. And I think for the first time, he's become aware that he's different. He's cleaved to people, comfort items and rituals from the past, as though his life depended on it, which I'm sure to some degree, it did. It does.

Labor Day Weekend he developed some weird swollen eyelid thing. Allergies? Infection? Something really awful? My mind went straight to worse case scenario, and I became completely obsessed. "My eyes are just swollen from all the crying," he said, when I asked him if they hurt.

You see he's been crying easily, too. He's cried more in the last three months, than he has in the last ten years.

Something deep within him is shifting. It's more than puberty. It's more than the trauma of braces. It's more than just becoming aware of his differences.

He's not who and what he was.

He's not who or what he will become.

He's in transition.

And for the first time I'm starting to really get that "his" story isn't even about him, it's about me. It's about the power and force of being his mother.

Now maybe that story will allow itself to be written.