With his high school freshman year done, my son looks ahead. Where does the time go?

Kansas Reflector opinion editor Clay Wirestone's son took this picture outside their home earlier this month at twilight. (Photo by Baxter Wirestone)

My son finished his freshman year of high school on Thursday, and I’d be lying if if I say I feel entirely calm and composed about it.

Raising the child these days feels like you’re making an entirely unwarranted bet on the future. So many of my columns deal with ways in which our current government and society fall short. Your duty as a parent is to tell your child not to pay attention to any of that, or to believe that such challenges are only temporary. He or she will be able to achieve; they will be able to make the world a better place.

My son made enormous strides over this year, in making new friends and engaging deeper in his love of playing violin. He took the basic courses you might expect, but also experimented with pottery and drawing classes.

I’m proud of him, but also more sentimental than I expected as the first of four high school years draw to a close. Over this past school year, he has turned from being a kid — someone whose transitory enthusiasms and ridiculous witticisms can be dismissed as temporary exuberance — into a young adult.

I can talk to him like a peer. Not all the time, of course, because he’s still 15. But he understands more. He makes sly inferences about the world around him. He likes AI, he told me the other day, he just wishes that it used less water.

His response to the previous paragraph: “I was like that before. You just talk to me differently now.”

He also, as is the case for most teens, understands his parents’ shortcomings and foibles better than they do.

I seldom write about my family for Kansas Reflector. Back in the 1990s, I remember reading humor columnists who used their family foibles as grist for the mill of their columns. While those pieces might have entertained, I always felt like it was a little intrusive to exploit others in your family as topics.

But I can talk to my son about my writing these days, and I can ask how he feels about it. For now, he likes the attention In the way of a younger person, he’s eager to be highlighted by adults and praised for his aptitude. So I also include a photo of his above, an images captured one evening a few weeks ago and put through numerous iPhone filters.

The point of this column, I suppose, is no different than the point of any autobiographic writing. We live in a continuum of human experience, we deal with the passage of time and the changing of people around us. We age, and we heard toward inevitable obsolescence. Meanwhile, a new crop of canny and motivated young people wait for their chance to take the wheel.

My son’s friends and acquaintances have uniformly impressed me over the past could of years. They are quick and brave, dedicated to equality and all too aware of the work needed to restore our country to its original promise.

Friday afternoon, I was cleaning my car and found a long-forgotten relic in a crevice beside the driver seat. It was a ring with Celtic insignia, one I bought nearly 15 years ago to represent my son and my commitment to giving him the opportunities that he deserves.

I already wear two rings — one of them a wedding ring and one my high school class ring, which includes a scroll representing the journalism career I hoped to follow.

That afternoon, I put the ring back on. Godspeed to my son and to his fellow cynical, yet hopeful, zoomers.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.