Last year at this time, I was thinking about writing a big rant about about how my sons don’t want to climb or be climbers. It was going to be angry and funny. Mostly angry… I mean funny. Wait, do I mean sad?
Shifting from a family with young kids who homeschooled and climbed a lot (the Living the Dream phase) to a family with older kids who were doing their own things and starting to live their own lives and leaving the nest (the Leaving the Dream phase?)– Seb moved out a year ago and is still surviving!– has been disorienting and sad and challenging, for us parents. And also joyful and happy! …I almost forgot that part– it’s good when your kids want to take control of the wheel and ask you to, please, get out of the car. I was mostly feeling disoriented and sad though, so I was going to write a rant about my boys not wanting to be climbers, or climb with others, or climb with us, or even watch climbing events on TV, but the desire to complain often fizzled as quickly as it flared.
A short history of the Leaving the Dream phase: Being on the crew team all four years of high school finally killed the climbing bug in Seb. He didn’t have time to climb even if he wanted to, which he didn’t in those days. The crew team experience also kept the rest of us from climbing much, except for in the gym. For a couple of those years, Oren climbed a lot in the gym with me and some outside. Climbing fulfilled his homeschool PE requirement. He was getting taller and stronger, and therefore, better at climbing when COVID hit. The gym was closed for a while, and the mask requirement when it reopened was a big turn off for Oren. So he stopped climbing in lieu of long boarding and mountain biking out-of-doors with friends.
I have been trying to come to terms with this phase for a while, I even pre-gamed it, but the rant urge flared up now and again when I would feel a little bit spurned, as a climber mom. This flare up of anger/sadness occurred a lot while I was reading Valley of Giants, a wonderful, groundbreaking collection of essays and interviews and articles written by women who had contributed to the history of climbing in Yosemite. A somewhat common thread through many of these stories was the daughter becoming a climber because of the influence of her father. I remember wondering each time I encountered this, have there ever been any sons who became a climber because of the influence of their mother? There probably are, but I just haven’t come across them yet (time to do some research). Of course, the unavoidable next question for me would always be, why weren’t my sons influenced to be climbers because of me?? Did I do something wrong? Is it because I’m a woman? Asking these questions was never satisfying. It usually led to a pity party for myself and made me feel emotions that weren’t really fair to the boys. It led me to ask questions about how much mothers should or could or would influence their sons– questions that I couldn’t answer very well.
A big struggle for me being a mom of boys is knowing when it’s good for me to have a voice and use it, and when it’s good to be quiet.
I wrote an essay when the boys were little, called “Boys on the Rocks,” about how I wanted to pass the love of climbing on to them as some sort of legacy, a mother to her sons. (If my book ever gets published, that essay will be in there.) It’s a little romanticized, I admit. I wrote it during our Living the Dream phase, and I took it as a given that they would grow up climbing with us, and then continue to climb with or without us when they grew up. “The family that plays together stays together,” you know. Climbing as legacy wasn’t a well thought-out idea, it was more of an emotion, a feeling, a desire. While a climbing mom wants her kids to grow up and be climbers, there is also the scary side that needs to be considered: climbing is dangerous.
In 2009, writer and climber and mom, Susan EB Schwartz … wrote an article for Climbing Magazine, “Eight Confessions of a Climbing Mom,” and Confession No. 6 was, “I hope my children won’t want to climb.” While she got a lot from climbing– “zest, insight, and joy”– she really hoped they would find those things somewhere else because she’d “worry a lot.” When I found and read this article more recently, I agreed with her reasoning even though it conflicted with my feelings. But the most important thing she said was this, “…I’ve introduced them to climbing, believing that they need to make these choices for themselves.” Here is where the quietness comes in. I have to step back and let my sons decide on their own whether they will climb. Or not. So, I have tried to let go, or suppress, or ignore my own finicky feelings on the matter.
These past few months, a funny thing has begun happening: both of my sons have started to climb in the local gym on their own, with friends, and sometimes together. They are as big as men now, tall, muscular, and with their experience of growing up in the climbing gym and on the rocks now realize that they can pull down hard. Legitimately hard. Now I have conversations with them about particular climbs that they tried or did at the gym, and maybe I tried or did the same ones. More and more often, they are sending problems that I will never be able to do. My almost-50-year-old-lady-muscles just can’t keep up. Their dad can though, for now.
We have even put another bouldering trip to Hueco Tanks in West Texas on the calendar for Thanksgiving this year. Both young men are excited to experience this place they have been over and over again as boys, and actually try all the boulders in their strong man-bodies that they watched Brian and I climb. They both have said that they want to send See Spot Run while we are there in particular, an ultra classic high ball, topping out at 25 feet. Yikes. Brian has done this problem. The year I turned 40, I did it myself. How different will it be watching my sons climb that high? Will I worry a lot? Yes, yes I will. But for however long this yet-unlabeled phase lasts, I’m going to enjoy it, while at the same time, hold it loosely. Phases change and shift all the time. It’s not a given, it’s a gift.
So I guess I’m glad I never ended up writing that rant… although it would have been fun to write, and funny to read, maybe. (If I do end up writing a rant, it might be titled, “Damn you, testosterone!”)
