Quality Time      We play a little game around my house, a spin-off from that popular TV show, “Name That Tune.” You remember it, where contestants tried to guess the song in as few notes as possible.      In our home version, we search for the fewest number of words to send our 15-year-old son running in terror, though it is great practice for cross country.      It’s not five words, “Please — take — the — laundry downstairs.”      It’s not four words, “Please — mow — the — yard.”      It’s not even three words, “Load the dishwasher.”      It’s those glorious two words: “Quality time.”      Nothing elicits a faster response than that magical phrase, “quality time.” You can see the panic flood his face as he searches for a legitimate excuse to escape.       As my only child drags me through his teen-age years, I have to admit we’ve never gotten along better. But don’t tell his friends. Teens hate to admit their parents can be their best friends. It just seems so … unnatural. But I’m a mom who likes her kid, a phenomenon beyond love. You can love somebody, but to like them simultaneously is truly a miracle.      It was that magical connection and sheer endurance that drove us 3,014 miles along the east coast for two weeks this summer. This would likely be the last summer vacation we’d have together before new commitments in his life would start intruding on our “quality time.” We trekked through the culture of Washington, D.C., and survived an argument on who got whom lost. (I still say it wasn’t my fault.)      We changed our first flat tire together in the rain. We ate pizza on a boardwalk and conversed with the seagulls. We kicked back in the Boston Commons under the bluest skies framing the skyscrapers. We counted the bugs hitting the windshield on a late night drive through the hills of New York.       We opened our eyes and our hearts throughout our journeys, and our ears absorbed each other’s words in a whole new language, adult to adult. He enjoyed that especially in yelling at me after I forgot to stop for gas. (That time he was right.)      We also celebrated both of our birthdays on the road, 12 hours of driving on mine and dinner at Cheers on his. He knew the trip was his present, but I had forgotten to get him a birthday card. As he slept that morning in the hotel room, I created my own card with 15 years of memories and confessions flooding my pen and my eyes …      I knew nothing about babies until I had you. I had never in my life changed a diaper until we brought you home. Each day you learned something, I learned twice as much. In one little person, I discovered something so adorable, so playful, so delightful, so terrifying, all in one.       I learned how to love, to be patient, to share, to teach. I had to reach deep within myself for emotional and physical strength, much of which I never knew existed. Mothering is part natural and part learned, and I definitely had to start on chapter one. At the same time, I’ll never finish that book as I grow and change with each stage of your life, no matter how long we both live. A mother and son have an eternal bond, some elements spoken, most not.      The journey has been both poignant and painful, cherished and challenging. Nothing can compare to watching a tiny, helpless infant grow in a self-sufficient man. Some days I thought would never end, other ended far too soon. And 15 years have seemed to vanish.       Where is that baby I would stare at in wonder? He’s a young man I now study in awe. From the soft baby cheeks to the slim masculine profile and the beginnings of a mustache, I’ve watched that evolution and still find it amazing. The baby I would try my darnedest to take care of … now takes care of me.      After he had read my impromptu prose, I couldn’t mistake the glisten in his eyes and the love in his embrace.       “Quality time,” I have learned, is just as precious whether it’s two weeks or two minutes.      But when I crawled out of that purple pick-up truck that final day, he said, “Now don’t bother me the next two weeks” as he ran toward the house.      “Quality time.”       Never have two words wielded such power …       “Take out the garbage now, young man, or it’s quality time for you.”