It is official - I am the Mom of a teenager - post 10...3 more to go!

My oldest son, Avery, turned 13 on December 13th. I am in the midst of 13 memories of him…I know it is a silly Mom thing…but, it is therapeutic for this silly Mom!




There are many moments in motherhood that I would love to remember but day to day life seems to fade the memory. Then there are those memories that are forever stamped on our heart. The births of our children, those first days of school, the baby teeth that are tucked away in a box, and the many x-rays of all of the broken bones…we have several those at our house.


I have one particular memory of Avery that I will never forget. It happened the summer that he was six. As I have mentioned in a previous post, Avery has never had a lack of energy. He played hard and long…all day, every day! Our goal was to run off as much energy as possible before bedtime each night.

One summer afternoon, Avery had exhausted my 3 year old Riley so I carried him into the house to put him down for a nap. It only took a few minutes to get Riley to sleep, and I headed back outside. As I opened the door, I saw my son laying face down in the middle of our busy street. To say that time stood still, my heart stopped beating, or that I felt all of the life drain out of me would NOT be an exaggeration. I instantly started screaming his name and running down our steep driveway. Even as I type, my heart starts to beat faster just thinking about seeing him laying there. I just knew that he had been hit by a car. As soon as I got down to him, I rolled him over. His little batman skateboard was underneath him. He opened his eyes and looked at me, and my heart started beating again. At this point, I was sobbing, looking for blood, and feeling for broken bones.

With a very puzzled look on his face, he told me that he had fallen asleep on his skateboard at the top of the driveway. Apparently, he had rolled down the driveway into the street - all the while sleeping soundly. My legs were shaking so badly that I had to sit in the grass for awhile. I wanted to kiss him and spank him all at the same time. Later that evening, the batman skateboard mysteriously disappeared. Hopefully, it is buried deep in a landfill in Jackson, TN.

Avery has given me other major scares, and I am sure that there are more to come. However, I can only handle blogging about one heart stopping moment at a time.