Tracy Cowles, CEO and owner of Next Step Therapy, submitted the following article:

A GREAT KID WHO LOVES HIS MAMA
(written in the fall)

My oldest, who is a sophomore at WVU, texts with me almost every day, and calls twice a week. That, in and of itself, is the epitome of having a great kid who loves his mama. When he attended his first cadaver lab, it was a 90-minute conversation about being the first to take a scalpel to the corpse. It is scheduling, and being tired, and watching the money he earned over the summer dwindle rapidly. It’s concern that he bombed a test, with a call or text later that he got a 96. It’s missing being a kid, and trying like crazy to be a man.

Our texts this week, with N being Noah, and M being ME/Mom:

M: How is your day?
N: I’ve had better. I got asked to play basketball, and tore up my knee that I had surgery on.
M: How bad?
N: I’m going to see a professor later.
M: Keep me updated

M: Well?
N: It’s swollen, hurts, is loose, and the Athletic Trainer people think I damaged the Meniscus again.
M: Do I need to call the surgeon?
N: I’m doing ice, meds, and exercises. The Athletic Trainer grad students are on it.

M: Do you need an appointment with the Physical Therapist? What about your crutches?
N: Mom, you know I’m an adult, right? I can make my own appointments.
M: Oh, I fully intended for you to make your own appointment, just wasn’t sure you’d do it without me pushing you. What about the crutches? Do you need them?
N: I’m an athletic trainer student. We have 300 pairs.
M: Of course you do.

M: Happy Halloween! How’s the knee?
N: Not as swollen, hurts less, still loose.
M: Your brother has decided he’s too old to Trick or Treat.
N: OMG, I’d pay money to get to do Halloween. I’d carve a pumpkin, get a costume…
M: That ship has sailed my love.
N: The Halloween parties across from my apartment Friday night were so out of control that the police came in riot gear and fired tear gas.
M: Wait, what?
N: (Sends me a video of cops in riot gear, firing tear gas….)
M: Holy crap! Thank God you weren’t involved in that!
N: Yeah, but, really, if you don’t have a few of those nights in college, what are you doing, really?
M: True honey. True. But, parents would like to think that their kids are in their room, drinking hot cocoa and playing Xbox.
N: Then that’s what I’m doing!
M: Exactly.

It turns out from these conversations that Noah is doing a fine job of being a man and managing himself, and given that I have not yet hopped in the car and made an emergency, panicked trip to WVU, I think I’m managing myself pretty well too!

~Tracy