Eyes

I’m in the basement of the hospital facilitating an MRI scan with a teen. He’s 15 and a little nervous – by his account he hasn’t ever completed an entire scan with us. But he hopes this will be the first.

Just a few weeks ago he had another first. I wondered: how did he get his hands on it? Was he alone or in company? How did it make him feel?

His parents know and disapprove, but understand. They see themselves in his laugh, in his mistakes, in his eyes. The same eyes that once wanted nothing more than their love and attention. The same eyes that cried the entire car ride on the first day of kindergarten. The same eyes that so easily turn and shy away from them now.

There they will look at his worst and his best. There they will look when he is lying. There they will look for the one that was once theirs, is theirs, and has yet to be.

Everything changes – it’s life’s only guarantee. Everything except his eyes.