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It's not that my job as his father is over (a father's job is never over). It's that he's now at the stage of his life in which, arguably for the first time, he has his own future in his hands. Actually he, like each of us, always had and always will have his own future in his hands. This is merely the first time he's realizing it. It's the first time he's realizing he must inexorably confront it - for better or for worse, wherever it leads, wherever he may go with it, from now on for the rest of his life.
We're walking to the creek again, something we haven't done together in a while. We're talking in the quiet, trusting, comfortable, familiar way in which a son and his father talk. There are still some "Ooh"s and "Aah"s, to be sure. But there are far more of his "What if?" questions now, far more baseline confronting the world as it is - which is to say, far more baseline confronting the world as it occurs for him which he now has to deal with in order to kickstart his own life independent of me. And my role now is less of feeding him, less of clothing him, less of sheltering him, less of educating him, and more of listening him as he inquires into what's possible for his future.
In this regard, Joshua's got two big things going for him. The first is Joshua likes being Joshua. When you already like the person you are at an early age, it bodes well for a future of being and fully expressing who you really are. And it's not simply that when you like the person you are at an early age, the seeds of enlightenment are strewn on fertile soil - which is a decisive advantage, to be sure. No, it's more than that. It's much, much more. It's when you like the person you are, others are more likely to also like the person you are, making your passage through Life easier (and by easier I only mean more workable). The second is he's brutally honest with himself. He's not afraid to tell himself the truth about his life, about what works about his life, about what doesn't work about his life. It's a quality he's not reticent to share with me. When he does, it makes a really profound level of communication between us possible.