I’ll Hold on To Moments of Childhood with My Preteen as Long as I Can

This Christmas season, my husband took our laser light projector and aimed it at the Australian bottle tree in the front yard. It shone like a thousand red and green fairies dancing through the branches. The first time I saw it, I gasped with glee.

Christmas came and went. Much to our 6-year-old’s disappointment, we took down the decorations and boxed them in the attic until next year. I noticed that my husband forgot to put away the light projector though.

One Friday night, recovering from a stomach bug, we decided to watch Wonka and fold laundry. We bought into the pure imagination that the world could be a place of whimsy. And hope.

Following the film, my husband immediately sat at the piano to learn the chords. Our 10-month-old joined in, pounding the keys. It was getting late, so I asked my older two to help me fix my bed.

“I’ll help,” my son, 11, tried to bargain, “but only if you play parachute.”

“Nope, you can just help because I need it,” I said, handing him the corner to the mattress protector.

My daughter held up the fitted sheet.

“Just one game of parachute?” they pleaded in unison. I remembered a conversation from earlier that day with a friend at the park.

“They say when your preteen asks to spend time with you, drop everything to do it. You gotta soak them in.”

I stared across the bed at my son’s boyish face and realized with a sharp pang that these moments of play with him are fleeting.

“Okay,” I said, calling my husband over, “we’ll do parachute.”

Our three kids snuggled close under the sheet as it billowed over their heads and then deflated. The baby’s eyes filled with wonder. Soon, he took his cue from the big siblings, giggling, and anticipating the next rise and fall.

“It’s a hurricane!” I yelled, shaking it. They squealed louder.

“Okay, now I have a surprise!” my husband said and disappeared.

Wonka’s soundtrack soon floated down the hallway. He returned, speaker and laser projector in hand. After plugging in the projector and flicking off the light, the thousand red and green fairies came back to life. They flew around the room to the tune of “Pure Imagination.”

My daughter, six, leaned over and whispered, “This is the best night ever!”

My eldest put his head on my chest. The baby snuggled in the crook of my husband’s arm. We breathed in unison, a collection of flesh, of beating hearts, and wide eyes.

Next, my husband played Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me” song partly to be silly. He knows Celine is nostalgic to me. My socked feet tapping on the headboard, I belted the lyrics. The baby, eyes fixated on the walls, raised his voice in one long vowel sound.

“Wait,” the 11-year-old said, “does ‘endless nights of pleasure’ mean what I think it does?” Things aren’t getting past him these days. His knowledge of the world growing bigger all the time when all I want is to safeguard him forever.

My toes curled inside my socks. “Yep,” I admitted, “that’s what it means.”

“Oh, geez,” he said, grossed out.

I went back to belting the lyrics, thinking how this moment was better than any house party or club night I ever spent in my youth.

At bedtime, I tucked my eldest in last.

“Stay, Mom,” he pleaded, “and talk to me for a bit?”

I inched closer to his bed even though everything in me wanted to tell him I’d already given up most of my night letting them stay up too late, that it’s my time now. Instead, I snuggled close, stroked his hair, and listened to him share, knowing he might not want to confide in me forever.

This is what it’s like raising a preteen. In your heart, you want them to understand that moments like these far outshine any rave or party on the planet. And snuggling with Mom is exactly what they need most. But I know it won’t always be so. That’s why I hold on to these moments as they dance around me, like flitting fairies who possess every sweet speck of childhood magic left.