Edit 48: The Front Row Seat
Musings on time, growing, and Jackson’s eighteenth birthday in Tokyo.
Jackson turns eighteen today.
Sit with me for a moment because I've been trying to decide what feels most remarkable about that.
The number itself certainly carries weight. Eighteen is one of those birthdays treated as a threshold—childhood on one side, adulthood on the other. But standing here in Japan, that isn't what I keep thinking about.
What I keep thinking about is time.
The first time Jackson came to Japan, he was still in a stroller, small enough to reach for my hand without thinking. Small enough that crossing a busy Tokyo street required a reminder to stay close. Small enough that the world felt impossibly large and he felt impossibly young.
Now we're walking many of those same streets again—sometimes together, sometimes apart. The streets haven't changed nearly as much as he has.
Somewhere between those first, uncertain train rides and these quiet June days, between elementary school and high school graduation, between jazz rehearsals and college acceptance letters, between childhood questions and adult conversations, he became someone new.
Not all at once and not through any single defining moment, of course. It happened the way most meaningful things do: gradually, steadily. One ordinary day at a time.
After eighteen years, this is what still manages to surprise me about parenthood. The milestones arrive with great fanfare. First steps. First day of school. A driver's license. Graduation. An eighteenth birthday. But the real transformation happens in the thousands of simple moments between them—his own in-between, if you will.
It's in the car rides and late-night conversations. In rehearsals, performances, family dinners, and weekend errands. In the victories that seem enormous in the moment and the disappointments that feel just as significant. It's in watching a child slowly grow into who they have always been.
Over the last year, I've watched Jackson finish high school, earn honors that made him proud, choose a university he is genuinely excited about, and begin imagining a life that belongs entirely to him. Yet when I think about this birthday, those accomplishments aren't what fill me with the most gratitude.
I am grateful for who he is.
He's thoughtful and kind, stoic at times. There is a quiet stubbornness to him that I used to butt up against but have come to admire—because the same quality that makes him dig in is the one that will carry him further than he knows. But he is not all gravity. He’s funny in ways that often catch me off guard—his wit is sharp, words quick and confident. He's so curious about the world around him, and steady in a way I certainly wasn't at eighteen. He's the kind of person who notices things, everything, really, who pays attention, who engages with the people and places around him. Perhaps most rewarding of all, the more he grows into himself, the more I enjoy his company.
The older he gets, the more remarkable that feels—and the more the dynamic between us has quietly shifted.When our children are small, we spend so much time teaching them. We guide, explain, encourage, and protect. Then somewhere along the way, the relationship begins to change. You realize you're learning from them, too.
Maybe that's why eighteen feels less like an ending than I expected. We've spent so much time in Japan on trains—watching platforms appear and disappear, the city giving way to something quieter, then the city again. There's something familiar in that rhythm now. The next destination is his to choose. The journey belongs increasingly to him. But what a privilege it has been to travel this far together.
People often say that raising children is life's greatest gift. I think they're only partly right: the greatest gift isn't raising a child. It's having a front-row seat to the person they become.
And after eighteen years, I can say without hesitation: it has been the honor of my life to watch.
