Words Cecilia Maddison
The evening didn’t start well. I should have been more discreet. Teenagers don’t relish being stared at on a crowded railway platform, especially by a parent.
‘What are you looking at?’ My son flashed withering side-eyes at me.
‘I’m wondering how you grew up so fast.’
With a shrug of disdain, he turned away to face the approaching train. A shove couldn’t have pushed me further away.
My stare arose from the understanding that parents take fewer photos of subsequent children than they do of their first. Growing up as one of five, I’d witnessed this firsthand in faded family albums. Of course, the number of photos does not directly correlate with love: my youngest sibling will always be the beloved golden child, despite the dog-eared, scattered snaps of his childhood suggesting otherwise. But I wasn’t prepared for the jolt when I realised that I, as a parent, had failed to capture the transformation of my youngest child into a lanky teen. The vanishing years – those time lapses that pass when a parent’s back is turned – had rolled by relentlessly.
When motherhood was a novelty, I photographed every moment, examining my own journey as much as my changing firstborn child. By the time my second child was born, I was jaded and bleary-eyed, and although I loved him every bit as much, his life was less recorded. Often, when I did capture him in an image, he appeared alongside his brother as one half of a matching set.
Then, sometime around his thirteenth birthday, his face disappeared entirely from the camera roll. This time, the fault was not with me. The pictures stopped because he no longer wanted to be held in his family’s gaze. Whenever he became aware of a camera aimed his way, he pulled his ubiquitous grey hood further over his head, let that sweep of long brown hair drop over his eyes, and held up his hand to ensure obscurity. Thanks to new brain circuitry and hormones, the affectionate, funny kid in family pictures became an aloof, daylight-averse teenager whose image was impossible to capture.
Now, this near-stranger and I were boarding a train together for an evening out. I’d persuaded him to accompany me to see a musician whose songs had threaded through numerous family car journeys and Sunday afternoons. It would be his first taste of live music, and I was keen to introduce an experience his virtual world couldn’t deliver. Perhaps it would even rekindle an interest in his own guitar, which had been gathering dust.
It didn’t take long for more tension to build. On the train, he sat across the aisle, head bowed, thumbs twitching, tapping away at his phone in endless online conversations.
‘Want to talk?’ Too late, I realised I’d posed a closed question: a faux pas in teenage parenting literature, but my tone was open, my intention warm. Here was a parent who understood, the type of parent any kid could open up to.
‘Why do we need to talk?’ He didn’t look up.
‘Well, we haven’t chatted in ages.’
‘I don’t want to chat. Why are you talking so loudly, anyway?’
‘I’m not.’
‘You’re practically shouting. It’s embarrassing.’
I swallowed my frustration. The tiny, clenched fists of infancy had grown to adult-sized hands operating a distant, invisible world, and a faint fuzz now covered his top lip. I couldn’t recall when we last shared any meaningful eye contact. I bit my tongue not to tell him he was rude and ungrateful for remaining so disengaged. In truth, I missed him, and I wasn’t going to challenge him – not tonight, at least.
We arrived early at the music venue and wandered up the street to find somewhere to eat. He didn’t fancy Thai, he deemed the burger place disgusting, and he refused to enter the pub – probably because it was heaving, and he’d become averse to crowds. His stooped head and rounded shoulders betrayed his apparent nonchalance. It would be a while yet before a young man’s swagger replaced his awkward, self-conscious gait. Eventually, we agreed on a quick bite from the sandwich bar across the road. As we dodged the traffic, my shoulders sagged beneath the sudden, lazy weight of his arm. I crossed my own arm across his lower back – slowly, tentatively, as if to avoid startling a wild animal – and for a few seconds we strode in step. For this rare show of affection, I brought him the crisps and chocolate milk he clamoured for. He wolfed them down with ferocious teenage hunger.
Once inside the music venue, he rolled his eyes at the building’s infamous circular design and supporting beam structure.
‘I mean, what’s the point of going to all this effort when you can listen to the same music at home?’
‘It’s about the atmosphere. You’ll see.’
‘Whatever.’
Having grown to a ridiculous height – on the rare occasions he tolerated a hug, my head rested at the level of his heart – he folded himself into his seat, limbs bent at awkward angles, knees pointing to his chin. His face conveyed his discomfort, even when he resumed gazing at his phone.
‘What’s so important?’ I demanded, unwilling to play second fiddle a moment longer.
He chuckled and showed me the screen. With our heads almost touching, we watched a video he’d taken earlier in the day of his friends careering around the skateboard park in a shopping trolley. Whilst honoured to catch glimpses of this secret other life, I couldn’t help commenting on the risk of concussions and smashed teeth.
‘When dopamine floods the teenage brain, it can make danger feel irresistible,’ I explained, dopamine flooding my own brain at the chance to impart my wisdom.
‘You think everything is dangerous. Right now, you’re probably thinking the ceiling could fall in.’ Adopting a high-pitched, sarcastic emulation of my voice, he raised his hands in mock horror. ‘Oh no! Let’s go home straight away!’
I nudged my elbow into his ribs. ‘I just worry sometimes, ok?’ Retrieving my own phone from my bag, I angled it for a selfie, prepared for an indignant shove. To my astonishment, he leaned in, grinning as I captured our pose.
The performance began. The first riffs of a well-known track tumbled through the auditorium, eliciting a murmur from the audience. I sank back in my seat, the sound both soothing and exciting my nervous system, and I threw a curious glance his way.
Head down, he remained glued to his phone.
This time, I was cross. ‘Cut it out. You’re here for the performance,’ I hissed.
He held out his phone, showing me a picture he’d shared in a group chat. In it, the musician poised with his guitar in beams of violet light before a sea of bobbing heads. Below it, friends’ comments were popping up. Sic bro. Enjoy ur nite.
Lights ripple across the crowd standing in the stalls below. Seeped with sound, my son leaned into me: a childlike posture for a grown-up frame. The effort of bearing his weight niggled my lower back, but I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.
Afterwards, waiting for the train home, he didn’t want to talk about our evening, already preoccupied with tomorrow’s busy school day. When he was younger, the need for sleep would arrive as abruptly as a knock on the door, and I knew better than to negotiate for more than he could give. Instead, I listened to his musings about homework being a waste of time and how little teachers actually knew about anything, offering reflections he mostly dismissed. As our train rolled in, his hand found mine with a clasp so loose and casual that I wondered if he was even aware of doing so. The approaching train had sparked some childhood pathway in his brain: an instinctive reaching for me as we navigated through the crowd to board, and I treasured the moment.
On the final stretch home, he paced ahead on the pavement, reaching the front door before me. When I fumbled with the lock, he bristled as if this were yet another burden of the evening to bear.
‘Straight to bed,’ I prompted, mindful of the late hour.
‘Don’t tell me what to do. You’re always nagging.’
As easily as that, we slipped back into the familiar old dynamics. The front door had barely closed before he bounded upstairs, taking two steps at a time, offering a grunt in response to my goodnight. His bedroom door slammed shut, sealing off his world from mine.
Sitting alone on the sofa, I swiped through the photos on my phone. There we were in our blurred selfie, my son’s face pressed close to mine. His hood was pulled up, but his eyes were warm and his cheeks rounded by a smile. Here was a version of my changing child I’d taken time to see, and I tagged this precious image with a heart.
For a moment, the vanishing years had been paused.
Cecilia Maddison
A writer from London, Cecilia runs her career as a health professional alongside her love of real and imagined stories. Her work has been published in Intrepidus Ink, Empty House Press, Cranked Anvil and elsewhere. She is a Best of the Net 2024 nominee, winner of the Edinburgh Flash Fiction Award 2025, and winner of the Bournemouth Short Story Writing Prize 2026. Read more of her work at ceciliamaddison.com
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