Thirteen is an age of almosts. Almost grown, almost ready, almost sure. And parenting a thirteen-year-old? It’s like helping someone pack for a journey you can’t take with them.

Lately, as I watch my nearly 14-year-old son grow more independent by the day, I find myself standing in two places at once: one foot planted in this present moment, watching him stretch toward the horizon, and the other back in the past, remembering what it felt like to be thirteen myself. To be both hungry for freedom and desperate for someone to quietly hold the net. With Mother’s Day on the horizon, I think about my mom and how she stood in this same spot with me, watching and worrying and letting go in her way. There’s something uncanny about watching your child navigate a moment you once lived, now seeing it from both sides.

A fellow mom of a teenager recently told me that at this point in parenting, it’s time to move from the role of manager to consultant, and I think about this a lot. My son is headed on his 8th-grade trip soon, and I handed over the packing list the school provided with a wish and a prayer. I did review the final contents of his suitcase, but the outfit selections were his alone. Of course it was fine. Not what I would have selected but I looked past the asthetics of his choices and gave him a high-five for the task.

Recently, before a haircut, my son and I passed my phone back and forth, sharing pictures from Pinterest that I’d searched, looking for some style that met our qualifications. Mine: Shorter than his collar; His: Fluffy and tousled on top and not too short around the sides.To his horror and amusement, I searched for ‘Haircuts with rizz.’

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked, I hoped rhetorically.

“I’m your mom. It’s my job to keep you in the rizz.”

Shaking his head, he scrolled down and down, eventually finding a look that seemed equal parts messy and trim, and he slid into the barber’s chair with a sigh.

Nothing delights me more than making him laugh, especially with my accidental ineptitude and un-cool Momness. I remember taking over the radio in the car with my mom and quizzing her on pop music.

“Who’s this?” I’d ask, as the opening strains of ‘King of Pain’ by The Police came on.

“Um, The Beatles!” she’d say in mock confidence and enthusiasm.

“No, Mom!” I’d laugh. “It’s the band I taught you!”

“I only know The Beatles. Wait, oh, it’s Fleece!”

“So close, Mom, so close!” I always doubled over with laughter.

Now, when I’m driving my kids around, they take over the radio through the Bluetooth and play their songs from my phone, ruining my Apple Music algorithm and quizzing me the same way I used to. I am at the age when very little embarrasses me, and everything embarrasses them, so I have a lot of material to work with. I make up pretend, terrible lyrics, and provide other amusing commentary. At least it’s amusing to me.

“There’s Elias’ mom! Should we honk at her?” I ask my passengers.

“NO!” they cower in horror. That’s all the prompting I need to roll down my window. “Hey, mama!” I holler out the driver’s side at my friend, tapping the horn, “Looking good!”

She looks up, startled, and laughs at us, waving and grinning, calling back, blowing kisses, “Thank you!”

The kids in the car are mortified. I’m delighted.

Sometimes it’s my turn to be mortified, or at least worried. My teenager has so much going on – homework, soccer, friends, school work, hormones – that his brain sometimes seems to tilt. And of course, it’s this same brain that tells him, appropriately so, that it’s time to assert his independence.

I don’t remember being thirteen as clearly as I do certain snapshots, but I do remember the intensity of it. Wanting space, but also not wanting to be alone in it. I wonder if my mom worried like this. I wonder if she knew how much I was still listening, even when I acted like I wasn’t.

He does things that teenagers do. He texts friends and meets them at the park to play soccer. He takes the bus home from school without me. He gets frustrated when I interfere, get too close, talk too much, comment when my opinion is clearly not requested. I get it. I respect this young man who proves himself to be a responsible human every day, and we trust him to navigate his way.

Most mornings, I still walk him partway to where he gets his ride to school. On the way, we sometimes chat about what’s going on that day or that week, sometimes we’re quiet, but in my head, I’m talking a mile a minute with unsaid advice, words of encouragement. I’m soaking in every precious moment of time he’s willing to spend with me, time I can be with him. I know these days are numbered. I hug him goodbye, marveling that this boy who is practically a man is now taller than I am, remembering the little kid who bravely walked this same sidewalk with his hand in mine on the way to kindergarten, what seems like days, not nearly a decade, before.

All too soon, he will be riding to school with friends, then off somewhere on his own, finding his way on a campus, picking out haircuts and outfits I have no say about.

And that will be good. Because if we do it right as parents, our consulting clients will eventually fire us, as our services will no longer be needed. That’s how it’s supposed to go—parenting, like growing up, is full of almosts. And this one? This is the best kind of almost: almost gone, but not yet.