Words of love or how to accompany my son's falling in love

PerpignanI still smile today when I remember the first time my son said to me, "You know, Mom? I have a girlfriend. Her name is Juliet, and she's older than me." He was four then, and Juliet was, in fact, a year older, and they both went to the same class. Preserving the memories of children's first experiences and discoveries serves to frame the initiation rituals of children as emblems that guarantee an immediate smile. They seem like sweet treats of tenderness that will never be tasted, but can be savored through the most nostalgic memory.

A few years later, in elementary school, my son became a great friend of the other boys in his class, with a friendship as loyal as D'Artagnan's with the Three Musketeers. And I, because we mothers sometimes take the bull by the horns, wanted to pave not the shortcut but the rocky road to talk and learn to converse and discuss ideas and points of view as our relationship as mother-son and son-mother was transforming just as the Oedipus complex was coming to an end. I must admit that on more than one occasion I put my foot in it by asking him if he had a special friend, and when he got a negative response followed by a silent smile, the most common leitmotif was: "Don't come back and leave me alone, Mom." Occasionally, and without fail, I went straight to ask him openly if it was a boy or a girl, simply for the sake of normalizing the freedom to choose one's loved one regardless of gender. He ignored me (and he was right to do so).

Meanwhile, the pretext of laborious conversation, with a clear intention to address more delicate issues, led us to begin a cycle of brief, familiar conversations that revolved around a sentimental and sexual education that I myself hadn't been able to benefit from as a child. Our good intentions didn't prevent us from tiptoeing around it, and sometimes even rushing through it, until we hit dead ends. However, topics such as falling in love, first kisses, menstruation, first sexual relationships, the breakup of a relationship, consent, LGBTI rights, bullying, and pornography, among others, were all covered. It must be said that I made an effort to adapt the cruder vocabulary of the adult world to his childhood vocabulary; first to create an environment of trust where he would feel safe and, second, because I wanted him not to be afraid to express the doubts and concerns caused by the real conflicts of the society we live in and, above all, to be himself.

A teenage relationship

And that's the end of the story of his childhood. In middle school, his friends suddenly changed, and in high school, with his hormones raging, the main character appeared, overwhelming all the lights in his garden of delight. And vice versa. Then, the teenage son of the house followed the pattern of flirting, feeling the butterflies fluttering in his stomach and the dependence on his cell phone to communicate with his girlfriend 24/7. And just like that, the acquired habit of conversation disappeared.

Then, I witnessed from a distance how the teenage son had conquered his own intimate space away from the family nucleus to share it with his loved one. And suddenly, life became exciting on the surface, like when he told me he had a girlfriend named Julieta when he was four years old.

The teenagers' relationship ended a few months after it began, just when they both turned fifteen. Perhaps they didn't know any better and three clichés weren't enough, or perhaps the interaction on social media was enough to know that they weren't made for each other, unlike the protagonists of Joan Manuel Serrat's 1967 song.