Truth

These kids. They're harder to pin down these days, less the wild children who used to run across the parking lot to their favorite tree or laugh and dance and throw the last bits of their donuts.

Tomorrow, if I came with donuts, I would be hard pressed to bring enough for extras. They're growing, and I don't know how their parents feed them, these cavernous creatures who stretch up each time that they see me, marking growth against some invisible line on my arm, my shoulder, my neck.

I can hip check them now with only the slightest bend of my knees, and their shoulder connects with my bicep when they slam the side of their body into mine. "I'm faster." M*t** shoves into me with all of the confident strut of a twelve year old, knowing that I'll drop my shoes and my conversation to chase him. Faster than last year. Faster than last week. Faster than yesterday.

He is. And, it's harder to tell these days which one of us is going easy on who.

At camp, he holds his force when we play chicken on the log, waiting to really tackle me until the end of the week, when he's confident in my ability to stand my own and fly into the water unharmed. But, he refuses to go kayaking without me, and there is something still young and unhindered in his eyes when he asks me to change buses, to ride home with them, when he reminds me a half dozen times that I promised to try.

They aren't quite my littles any longer. But not quite my "big kids" either.

They're middle schoolers: sixth, seventh, eighth graders.

We're learning new steps to an old dance, and sometimes it feels like the curve is too steep for any of us. But, we're figuring it out in that same messy way that we always do.

They show up for a youth group night at a local water park and ask for just enough time to go home and pack a bag before we go back to camp. They're joking, but there's truth behind it. Truth behind the talks about adoption and race and body image, about what they used to be like when they were little.

Truth to the kid who tells me that he isn't having such a good day. Truth behind the smiles that meet mine and truth behind the tears that still come when they find themselves overwhelmed. Truth behind the constant circles on the lazy river where we don't talk at all. Truth to the girls who chain behind me like a trail of ducklings and truth to the boys who reach for a hand out of the whirlpool.

"Wait right there." One of the boys commands after we miss our grip and he is left still spinning in whatever game they're playing. "I want to talk to somebody when I get out."

If he were a little younger, I would tease him about the lack of a 'please,' force him to use manners in the same gentle joking way that we do everything else. Except that he did. I can see it written in every line of his body, the 'please' when he needs it to be his turn. Sooner or later, he is going to make it happen.

I wait for a few moments, but we've (together) been on the wrong side of lifeguards before, and he hates it, so I let go of the wall when she starts giving that look. We never do talk. And, I'm racking up quite the list of kids who would like a quiet stretch of time all their own.

It feels unfinished. Hard to pin down. Messy. But, there is just enough truth to make it beautiful.

Beautiful when they use my towel and when we can't find the showers before we get in. Beautiful when a 7th grade boy wordlessly comes up and passes me a pack of cookies from the cafe. Beautiful when they wave and grin or shoot me with a water cannon. Beautiful when our small group breakout is as scattered and vehement as their thoughts. Messy but beautiful.