I was idling in the car line on a Friday afternoon at my then 6th-grader’s middle school when my little bundle of joy bounced into the car and excitedly announced, “Guess what, Mom! I’m a Sexpert!”

Oh. My. “What’s a Sexpert, Nick,” I asked, trying not to look too concerned.

“I got an A on my test today, so my teacher said that if you get an A, you’re a Sexpert,” he answered, quite pleased with his new designation. “I’m a Sexpert!”

That Friday was the end of the week of sex education. For sixth graders. Boys and girls together in the same room. In the beginning of the week, the teacher had the kids repeat, out loud, “penis, penis, penis” and “vagina, vagina, vagina” till they got all the pre-teen giggles out.  I would have loved to have been a fly on that wall. By the end of the week, the kids had apparently learned all they will ever need to know about sex. I imagine that their attention spans were in high gear and their listening skills were super sharp for this particular subject matter, because all of them were deemed Sexperts on Friday.

Jump forward to today, three years later. Nick is now in high school but I still get the pleasure of sitting in the car line to pick him up from school a few times a week. His baby voice has gone deep and he’s taller than me now, but, always, he surprises and delights me with his insights, announcements, and humorous banter.

We hadn’t even driven off campus yet when Steve Miller’s song,  “Fly Like an Eagle” came on the radio. Nick likes classic rock and knows his stuff, but I didn’t think that he knew about Steve Miller.  “That’s Steve Miller,” I said, picturing the album cover in my head as my memories took me back to my record player in our wood-paneled basement of days gone by.

“Yeah, Mom. I know that. That’s an example of a transcendental song.”

Oh. Hmmmm. What?? I don’t even really know what the word “transcendental” means or how it would relate to Steve Miller. My head was spinning as I grappled for some sort of intelligent reply. However, my lack of verbal response must have cued Nick that I was clueless, so he took it upon himself to explain the theory to me.

Transcendentalists don’t want to rush through life, and the “Time keeps on slipping, slipping” lyric is representative of that. The “I’m going to fly like an eagle” lyric represents nature, which transcendentalism believes is godly. Transcendentalists are individualistic and independent thinkers.

Oh this was getting deep. I was fascinated and amused at the same time.

Then, in the next breath, Nick goes, “Mom. A rectangle and a square are the same thing. Did you know that?”

“No, Nick. I did not know that. How so?”

The rest of the drive home left him time to explain to me that each are made of right angles…..

And so it goes. With each afternoon drive home from school, I seem to learn something new from my 15-year-old. When my 17-year-old is in the car, too – well, forget it. I listen, but I can’t even participate in their conversations that involve math, gaming, biology, annotating. I understand the conversations about dinner, movies, dogs, taking the garbage out. Simple mom stuff, not complicated high school stuff.

As parents, we’re usually the ones in the teaching role. How cool it is to watch my sons mature into young men with distinct personalities and goals, brothers who bounce things off of each other, debate, converse, teach, learn, and are making their way into adulthood together, one grade at a time. Suddenly, they’re out of diapers and we’re driving home from high school, and they’re teaching me things I never knew I needed to know: Lessons for academia, and lessons for the heart and soul.

What was lovely about today: Today was all about the steady drizzle of rain. Driving home from school in it, cooking dinner, fooling around on my computer, kids doing homework, dogs napping, all to the soft beat of the rain against the windows. What a quiet evening, peaceful, calm. The rain felt lovely today.