"That's cool, Mom. I'm Going Back to Bed."

My son, Jack, with the king salmon his dead grandpa helped catch. That is a story all by itself.

The other night, I was telling my son, Jack, all about the big things I’ve been working on.

You know, the kind of conversations we have with our kids where we’re half trying to impress them, half trying to remind ourselves that we’re still people with ideas and dreams and ambitions that reach beyond laundry and grocery lists.

I told him about this project and that idea, and how I’m thinking about the future.

About building something meaningful, something that might change lives, something that might even outlast me. I was probably glowing with that strange mix of pride and middle-aged existential angst.

He nodded.

“That’s cool, Mom. You keep doing that. I’m going back to bed.”

And down the stairs he went. Back to bed. Back to being seventeen.

And here’s the thing: he meant it.

He meant it in the way only a teenage boy can.

Genuine, unbothered, slightly amused.

You keep doing that.

He doesn’t need to read what I write.

He doesn’t need to understand the layers of meaning

or the threads of legacy I’m trying to weave.

He doesn’t need to validate my dreams or applaud my ambition.

He, and his sisters, are already the point.

I think of my mother, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother.

The women who came before me.

How many things did they build and dream and carry forward that I never knew?

How many times were they met with an eye-roll, a shrug, or the soft thud of footsteps disappearing down the hall, or in Jack’s case, down the stairs?

And still, they kept going.

They kept dreaming.

They kept becoming.

Motherhood is funny like that.

You give and give and give. You build and grow and reach.

And then, at the end of the day, you find yourself in the kitchen,

telling a half-asleep teenager about the empire of ideas you’re constructing.

And he just smiles, says, “That’s cool, Mom. You keep doing that. I’m going back to bed.”

And somehow, that’s enough.

Because real love isn’t about applause.

It isn’t about recognition.

It’s about the quiet knowing that you are already doing the most important work of your life. And it’s downstairs, fast asleep.