My son’s middle school graduation was last Wednesday and the 8th graders have not been back to the building except to pick up their report cards (school has been in session for the 6th and 7th graders).

This transition feels MONUMENTAL. Not only is school out for summer. But elementary school is over and the rest of life BEGINS (high school, that is).

The kids are on the cusp of something big and they look it. My son is taller than last week, his voice is lower, his hair longer. I know, I’m probably just imagining it. But I swear: he’s different.

He’s got friends I don’t really know. I’ve never met their parents, I don’t know their last names. I swore I wouldn’t let this happen. But it did. And quickly. Today I saw him walking down the street with a new friend from school. They waved but walked quickly past on Seventh Avenue.

This evening he called from Starbucks, "I sitting on a big comfy couch with…" I’d never heard the name. And it was a girl.

At least he called. And he was home by 8 pm.

This is an exciting time for him. I can tell. Busy, busy, busy. He has friends, interests, a band he’s proud to be in; the computer purrs with IMs into the night.

Being 14 seems to be all about what goes on when you’re not with your family – even kids who are close with their parents and siblings. When he’s with us he’s not really here: he’s thinking about friends, his band, his music, his life on the outside. That said,  his cranky doppelganger is here big time.  

I remember the summer before high school. I took a pottery course on the Upper West Side where I learned how to "center" clay on a potter’s wheel and to make coiled pots. I did feel betwixt and between. It was a lonely, quiet summer; I wanted to be with friends but no one was around.

My family spent the month of August in rented house on Martha’s Vineyard. I took sailing lessons and developed an unrequited crush on the 18 year old boy, who taught me to capsize in a Sunfish.

It was a limbo between states of being. Everything felt awkward and strange.

14 is about longing: wanting more from every situation; wishing you were someplace else most of the time.

I was impatient for the next thing to happen (even if I didn’t know exactly what I wanted the next thing to be).

For him, I don’t really know. He seems happy in his skin, engaged by what’s around him, excited by the prospect of summer which lies ahead like a blank canvas.