Fourteen

And now this kid.

How is he fourteen? It was just yesterday he was running around the house in a onesie and hiding all the spoons in the house under his pillow. We still don’t know what that was about.

This one likes music, like me. Some years ago he was learning Ode to Joy on both recorder and piano, and working out the melody in every key. I heard that song so many times I threatened to invent a time machine and do away with Beethoven before he could write the blasted thing, but secretly I was proud that Levi was so tenacious. Even if the dissonance as he picked through the melody in F# nearly drove me out of the house in subzero weather. These days he’s still playing the piano and has added the saxophone and the ukelele, and I’m still proud as punch, even when I say things like, “Perhaps you could practice that in your room for a while?”

He’s always eaten just about anything you put in front of him. I was at an appointment with him once and a dietician asked if there were foods he refused to eat. I thought about it for a minute and said, “Dill.” Dill pickles? She asked. No, I said. Just dill. The herb. He tried some at a restaurant and didn’t care for it.

“He’s two,” she said. “That’s … that’s pretty good.”

You know what that kid does now that he’s all grown up? He cooks dinner. He’s cooked probably 80% of the evening meals our family has eaten in the last two months. I make sure the ingredients are there and leave the recipes, but I haven’t cooked dinner on a weeknight in an age. It. Is. Amazing.

Partly, he does it because he likes to cook. But partly he does it because he knows how much it helps me.

And I’m prouder of him for that than if he invented a whole new key in which to play Beethoven.