A Lad. A Pendant. A Story.

I have a 13-year-old son.

He is tall, gangly, with a generous crop of hair on his head and an infectious laugh that can make your heart flutter. Mum bias notwithstanding. I am as guilty as anyone can get.

The reason I am writing this is because I am witnessing the metamorphosis of a boy into a person I deeply admire.

Not a man. Just a lad. A person becoming.

He was always interested in motorsport. I didn't pay much attention to it until the middle of last year, when he started spending more time around four wheels than on his two feet.

Obsessing over endurance races like Le Mans and animatedly discussing racing strategy with his father over dinner.

I noticed the sparkle in his eyes first.

Then the focus.

The way his reflexes seemed sharper on track days. The way he would spring out of bed at unearthly hours without the usual teenage negotiations. The scorching heat of Indian summers was merely another variable in the equation to deal with, not break a sweat over.

There was something about being on a track that transformed him.

The journey is not for the faint-hearted.

Karts are not built equally. Sometimes a race slips through your fingers because a part didn't perform. Not because of a lack of skill. Just the sleight of hand that motorsport occasionally deals you.

You learn to take it in your stride and motor on.

There are lessons in that.

This month, he travelled overseas for the first time. Alone. A foreign country. A challenging race. New people. New expectations.

He didn't win.

But there was so much to learn.

What it means to be part of a crew.

What it means to acknowledge the fear and the nerves but still show up.

What it means to understand that courage is not the absence of fear but the decision to drive through it.

He came back with shiny eyes and stories to tell.

At home, he enveloped me in a warm hug and said simply, "I missed you, Ma."

Then he quietly slipped a small pouch into my hand.

Inside was a pendant.

A small sphere of jade.

Something I had admired and spoken about before.

Somewhere between practice sessions, race briefings and the business of being thirteen in a foreign country, he had remembered.

But what stunned me most was his kindness.

His thoughtfulness.

His ability to think of someone else while he was agonising inwardly over a defeat.

The pendant is now probably the most priceless thing I will ever own.

Not because of what it is.

But because of what it represents.

It marks a shift in time.

A moment when I caught a glimpse of the person he is becoming.

The endurance races notwithstanding. The immense potential that will one day explode on a track.

But more than all of that, I saw the kindness.

The empathy.

The tenacity.

The qualities that will keep him grounded long after the chequered flag is waved, the engines have cooled and the lights switched off.

Long after the lap times have been forgotten.

Those are the things that endure.

And a little something for me too, aside from the jade.

To keep motoring on, on the darkest of nights.

My own Le Mans to drive and finish.

Molecularly Yours,

Sanjana

Curiously Irrepressible  

First dreamer. Accidental chemist @ Green Molecule - Clean Confidently