susan hayward photography : Junior High Spy: Lunch and the Ladies' Man

For lunch, we eat salads with ranch dressing on top. This is unfortunate. I am morally opposed to ranch dressing, having spent a semester in college washing out five gallon buckets of the stuff. You haven't experienced food torture until you take a steam bath in ranch dressing every day. This could be why my chin hasn't been free of zits for the last twenty years. But with no alternative, I open the dispenser and try to think happy thoughts. This proves impossible when thick globs of white, preservative-filled goo drop to my lettuce and I imagine what it will do to my digestive system.

There's so much noise in this room, which once seemed so large until it was crammed with kids, that I want to leave immediately. I am one who needs her personal space, and who needs quiet and tranquility for at least a few moments of each day. But there's none of that here. It's worse than Who-ville in the Grinch, when all the Whos were making a racket with their Christmas loot. Everyone's yelling so loud that I want to hold my ears and lament, "Noise, noise, noise!"

A kid screams intermittently, writhing in his seat. I wonder if it's ranch dressing poisoning, but by the looks of his buddies, it's not. The boys at his table laugh at his antics, going so far as to bang on the table in approval. Someone else takes up the beat and soon it starts to feel like we're in an earthquake. And indeed, a part of me wants to take cover under the table until it's all over. Also, if one more kid hits my bag as they pass our table I'm going to lose it.

I start to shovel salad into my mouth, hoping to escape the mayhem as quickly as possible. Then I decide I should be having a conversation with my son. So I ask him about a poster I saw on my way to the potty that morning.

"Are you going to the Valentine's Dance?" I say.

"Dance? What dance?" He thinks for a minute. "You mean the dance on Friday?"

"That's the one."

"Well, yeah," he says in between mouthfuls of salad.

"You do know they'll play slow songs," I tell him. I assumed this would make him change his mind. From what I recall, boys at this age don't know how to dance to slow songs, nor do they want to. But Calvin surprises me.

"Good," he says, grinning. I stare at him, then remember how many girls have giggled while looking his way, how many he's waved to in the hall. Then there's the girl who has repeatedly pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head while we've been trying to eat our lunch. Obviously, the girls notice him. And that's a good thing, I guess. It's not like I want him to ignore girls. I'm just not ready for him to get all hormonal about them. I'm not ready for him to pull a girl close to him and dance in the dimmed lights of the school gymnasium, and I'm definitely not ready for him to kiss anyone. I want him to think girls have cooties for as long as possible. What I really want is for him to be my little boy for a lot longer.

When we finish our salads and make our way to his locker, an older kid grabs Calvin by the arm. The kid turns to me and says, "Your son is quite the ladies' man." Calvin opens his mouth to protest. But the kid cuts him off. "He doesn't talk to anyone but girls," he says with a grin.

Calvin looks confused. And slightly embarrassed. "You don't talk to anyone but girls," he manages to sputter as the boy disappears in a throng of kids swarming the halls. I decide not to point out that both boys have been talking to each other, which would mean that they do not only talk to girls. But the moment is over, and I'm left to wonder if there's some truth to what the kid said.

Calvin leads me to his locker, where he chats with the girl at the locker next to him. I notice that although his smile is the same one he's always had, his voice is deeper now. And while I used to be able rest my hand on top of his head, by the end of summer he will probably be taller than me. But he's not done being my little boy entirely. He will still linger in the doorway for a goodbye hug in the morning. And at night when I ask, "Who wants reading time with Mom?" he always wants to be first. Granted, we no longer read stories about steam shovels and dinosaurs. Nowadays it's James Herriot, Harry Potter and the like. But there are times when it seems like the old days. There are times when Calvin will forget himself and rest his head on my shoulder just like he used to when he was a toddler. When he does this, I sit very still, remembering how warm his little body felt next to me, how small his hand was in mine. These are the thoughts that make me smile as I follow my son through the halls of junior high. My son is growing up. But he's not done just yet. And neither am I.