Go Ask Dad: Pimples and all

A friend texted, “You’re a pimple parent – congrats!” He was referring to the news of a small zit on the tip of my 11-year-old’s nose. My wife had noticed this blemish while seated next to our firstborn at a restaurant. I remembered the first time that she and I took him out to eat. He smooshed more food on his face than he managed to cram in his mouth. Now, he’s an adolescent, and our youngest child promptly declared her brother looked like Rudolph the Red-Nose.

When it was just the two of us, my wife admitted she felt as sentimental as when our son lost his first tooth. But there are no Pimple Fairies. No lighthearted magical rituals to mark the transition to puberty.

“By the time I was eleven,” wrote Richard Siken in The New Yorker, “I stopped being sad and started to be afraid.” Adolescence marks such a transition for many people. At that age, my grandfather, my hero, died, and then I lost a classmate every year of high school. I was not only grieving, but also afraid.

I worry about my son and our world. He has spent his entire school career training in case an armed intruder were to enter his classroom. He is aware of wars overseas and police violence in our country. He knows about the climate catastrophe. I will protect him as much as I am able. But that’s the real fear: I am able to do precious little. The sure things in life are death and pimples.

I am a pimple parent. Why not accept people’s congratulations? Life is change. No one is promised tomorrow. Why not celebrate the passage of time with each and every transition into maturity? Despite my feelings of sentimentality and trepidation, I am proud of my son. For instance, when his little sister teased him about being Rudolph, he merely chuckled. Why not find the humor when you can?

Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of Little Big Moments, a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems. Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.