My son is working out.

My son is blessed with a beautiful face. He has my two best features: big, brown eyes and a nice smile. Thank God he does not have my nose; this, and those uniquely bushy eyebrows, are courtesy of his father. I believe he got the best we both had to offer.

At 12, he is well aware of how others see him, how they have seen him all his life. And he is tired of it. When a woman in line at the grocery store smiles at Robby and says to me, “You’ve got a handsome boy,” his face twists. He knows he should smile. He tries. Yet those remarkable eyes cut up to me with a look that says he’s both embarrassed and annoyed. Having grown up ugly, I am not overly sympathetic.

He is also scrawny. Perhaps slight or skinny are better terms. My brother-in-law puts it this way: “That boy’s a poster child for Ethiopia.” But I think that’s a tad extreme.

I say this factually, with love and empathy. I, too, was scrawny. In 8th grade, I stood at 85 pounds.

My sixth grader weighs around 80 pounds. In swim trunks, his shoulder blades jut out from his back like bird wings. I can count his every rib. His appetite is as small as he is. His metabolism is mine on crack. Fast. Very fast.

Other boys his age are filling out as they grow. Robby’s just growing.

Friday night, I found him doing sit-ups in his room. Twenty-five each night, he said. Knees bent, hands clasped behind his head, boy-sized exhalations escaped him as he pulled his chest up and over his torso. His tennis shoes slid out a few inches with each sit-up. On the way down, he pulled them back into position.

I felt a curious combination of pride and pain. Pride in the efforts he’d taken on by himself. Pain in knowing he was now aware of his body, and found it lacking.

Saturday night, he suggested we turn on Exercise TV. He wanted to focus on abs and shoulders, so we chose a 20-minute program with a too perky blonde instructor. Lacking hand weights, I gave him two thick pillar candles to grasp. Not much weight, but the size was about right.

Five minutes into the routine, I felt my shoulders burning. Robby plowed through without complaint.

“We should do that again!” he said.

“Sure,” I agreed. “But you need to let your muscles rest a while. A good, long while. Maybe we’ll do it in two weeks when you’re back next!”

He frowned but nodded. He has little choice. Cable service isn’t available at his dad’s ranch.

This change in my son stirs another emotion: Yearning. For the fat, laughing baby that was, the white-blond toddler long since vanished, the wide-eyed elementary school student fast fading into memory.

My child is 12, and his mind is opening to new ideas. Life isn’t necessarily all about play and homework. It sometimes means enduring physical discomfort and pain with a longer-term goal in mind: A better self-image, more respect from male peers, and though he won’t yet admit it, the admiration of girls.

In other words, he’s showing all the signs of becoming a teenager.

I can’t stop it, nor truly do I want to. I can support and encourage him. And how cool it is that we have found yet another thing we can do together: Making fun of bouncy instructors and taxing our muscles to Exercise TV.

Hand weights are now on my shopping list. I’ll start him with two pounders. Me, I'll take those candles. They’ll do just fine.

It was a cold, mid-December night when I sent the text. Outside, snow fell sideways and inside, the house did a fair imitation of a boat, creaking with the wind. I was drunk on two glasses of wine and lonely. Dark at 4:30, pre-holidays, going on eight-years-alone, and giving-up-on-a-dream kind of lonely.

The phone number I swore had been erased more than a year ago was still stored in my text outbox, attached to one remaining text that had somehow escaped deletion. But it mattered not. Every time I crossed the Continental Divide and began the descent into Summit County, his phone number flashed neon bright in my mind. One night, it floated uninvited into my dreams. Each time, I shoved it aside with annoyance, unwilling to give in to a persistent subconscious.

With fingers unskilled in the art of texting, I typed slowly: “I heard the ODI closed. Thought of you.”

When I hesitated to turn the words into communication, I allowed this thought to wash over logic: You never get anywhere in life without taking chances. It was the same thought that started me on all the most wonderful adventures of my life.

I hit “send” and watched the tiny sealed envelope float over planet earth.

Frankly, I love this part about texting, and fiercely admire whoever came up with it. The message, floating backward and away, the envelope all but waving goodbye, sucked by an unseen force over the earth’s horizon, into the great beyond. “I’m gone! Too late! You can see me, but you can’t catch me now!”

And then comes the worst part: Waiting. Dealing with the logic that’s popped back up to the surface, spluttering and pissed off.

The ODI, a mountain cowboy bar more formally known as the Old Dillon Inn, was where we had met in May 2006. When I was drunk and celebratory and he was cute and sitting beside me. On the ODI’s crooked, wooden, front steps, we launched into a three-month relationship more about body than mind that left me emotionally tangled, disappointed with him, angry with myself. I broke it off clean and walked away proud. I left him, as I learned more than a year later, shocked to the core.

Left, too, an earring in his apartment. I knew he would think this was deliberate, which made the loss of one of my favorite pieces of jewelry that much more distressing. At home, I threw the mate in the trash. Thoughts of Roger likewise went out the window. He was the stuff of good stories, an episode in my life.

Until December, when I ached to be held by someone familiar.

Twenty anxious minutes passed before the phone issued a cheery bling, the signal of a text message floating down from space into my inbox: “hi, jane.”

And three minutes later: “I still have your earring.”

Today, there is a man’s toothbrush in my bathroom. A Valentine of a nontraditional sort who held me last night through a snowstorm not unlike the one of the December night on which I sent that first, cautious text.

This time, we have an agreement, rules put in place by me that he follows with little question, about time, place and courtesy. The time between visits is his and mine; our lives are separate, communication is minimal, questions about the hours apart few. The time we have is the opposite. It is ours alone.

Much of it is spent in the kitchen, creating the slightly exotic fare my son doesn't yet appreciate and that I never cook for myself. We slice pepper, chop cilantro, cut chicken and watch pasta boil while he talks, easily and without hesitation, and I, for the most part listen. Talking seems to fulfill a need in him, just as his masculine presence fulfills a need in me.

This time around, he lets me see the doubts and insecurities behind the lyrical accent, confident grin and cocky posturing that in 2006 initially dazzled and later annoyed me. This time around, we’ve become friends.

I am at peace with this man and this relationship. My emotions are not on a shelf, in his hands, or at war with one another. The calm I feel is a happy surprise.

This is not a relationship I could have handled, or even conceived, 10 years ago. Or even in May 2006. Years of experience, heartbreak, solitude, independence and maturity bring me here, to a strange, new, and for-this-moment-comfortable world. Where the focus is not on a misty future, but the moment, and the man is not potentially my long-awaited knight, but a person. And where a toothbrush is not a symbol of a serious relationship, standing alongside mine in the toothbrush holder, but the practical possession of a frequent guest, neatly wrapped in a plastic bag and tucked in a bathroom drawer between visits.

Back in an office environment, I'm readjusting to workplace etiquette. But there's one piece of this manners puzzle that has eluded me all my working life: Where do you go after the first hello?

Take Ron, our security guard, for example. Ron sits behind a desk in our company's lobby. Ron is an older gentleman, a Medicare recipient if ever I saw one. His job is to keep out the numerous gun-toting nut jobs who regularly storm our office in a lather over their insufficient dental benefits. OK, so it's not quite that. I honestly don't know why we need a security guard. But it gives Ron something to do, even if I'm not sure what he does all day.

Ron has a TV monitor that displays every nook and cranny of our lobby -- elevators, water fountains, the whole kit and caboodle. Apparently the 6th floor lobby of a mostly empty high-rise office building is a dangerous place to be. All I know is you don't pick your nose or adjust your panties until you're safely behind the bathroom door.

But back to my original question, and the premise for this entry. Ron is polite and professional, but not jolly or particularly relaxed. He'll open the door to the office if your hands are full. He'll share observations about the weather. And he'll, well actually, that's about all the interaction I have with him. Our relationship is rather stiff.

I'm a friendly person by nature, so this makes me uncomfortable. Thus my quandary. In the morning, I breeze in with a wide smile and say, "Good morning, Ron!" Ron looks up, smiles broadly and says, "Good morning!" in return and with equal gusto. Ron never calls me by name, because he does not know my name. Nor has he ever asked for it. At day's end, I sweep through again. "Goodnight, Ron!" Ron volleys back the same.

Yet I typically come through this lobby several times a day. In those between times, I studiously ignore Ron. This is always an effort for me. My instinct is to say hello again. But we've been there, done that and have no need to do so again. Besides, Ron typically does not look up when I walk through the lobby between those working hours. When and if he does, I am not sure how to respond. If I'm already walking past his desk, and have so far ignored him, I continue to do so. If it's early on in my journey through the lobby, I may look up, make eye contact and smile, or nod. But never do we say hello again.

None of it feels right. And in all my years of office work, never has it felt so awkward.

Likely, I've just been lucky. Most of the newspapers for which I worked were small, the staff friends, our job duties similar. We used the same terminology, hated the same community members, laughed at black humor others would find abhorrent and did foolish, drunken, after-hours things in front of (and sometimes to) one another. We threw things across the office at one another: chocolates, insults, Xacto blades and the like. We generally behaved like one big, dysfunctional family.

Yet the "Ron" scenario plays out throughout the day with most of my current co-workers. These people are not friends, or even people whose quirks are endured for the sake of workplace harmony. They are one step, and sometimes only a half step, up from the person on the elevator with whom you might discuss the weather. I know none of their quirks. Our job duties are so varied -- some selling insurance, others working in nursing homes, still others overseeing company finances, technical issues and Medicare compliance -- that few of us even know what our cubemates do.

Laura is married. I know this by the ring on her left hand. Brett has a baby. I know this from the photos at his desk. Aaron loves coffee. I know this because he consistently takes the last cup and leaves the pot stone dry. The inconsiderate asshole. I do not know these things because Laura, Brett or Aaron told me.

And then there's Clara. About whom I know everything, including the firmness of her chihuahua's waste. Clara is an odd, little exception.

I'm OK with working with relative strangers. It's just the way it is in our business, and our office. I'm just not OK with this whole second greeting thing. Do you smile? Nod? High five? Ignore? Compliment hair, clothing, or sales records? Am I the only one who wonders about this sort of thing?

To add to my discomfort, I sometimes forget who it is that I've already greeted. Thus, I may double blast someone with, "Hey! How are you?" in a fresh, top-of-the-morning tone of voice. This elicits a befuddled, often annoyed look, as the person realizes I've forgotten we previously crossed paths. There is absolutely no way out of this situation. Additional words only will worsen it.

This small quandary is, if nothing else, a study in human behavior. Can Brian really be so focused on his job that he truly does not see me? Does Mary Jo ever blink? How can Jenna stride so purposefully in four-inch heels? Does Fiona know there's spinach on her teeth?

And Ron, most of all the man and the mystery that is Ron. Is he hiding something? Is he insecure? Uncomfortable with women? Is work his shelter from a horrible home life? Are my cheery greetings the bright spot in his otherwise dreary day?

Or would he really rather I just shut up?

My son has been gone for weeks now, participating in a 10-week series of snowboarding lessons that makes it a logistical nightmare to get him to Denver for his normal weekends. Since January 7, my contact with him has been minimal. A weekend together in Summit County, where we skied, snow tubed and visited friends. A few e-mails and phone calls here and there. A short weekend coming up in a few days, simply because it has been too long, and another long weekend later this month. Finally, in late March, the lessons, and this unusual separation, ends.

I have been unusually busy during this time, filling in the gaps in time almost too well with classes, social outings and projects. I avoid spending any time in his room. It is lifeless and cold without him. I focus instead on things like this class, an exploration in what direction the rest of my life should take. I focus on making the most and the best of all this time on my own, investing in friends, investing in my job, investing in my home.

Unlike most parents, I'll be well prepared when Robby leaves home for college and his adult life. Since he was 14 months old and his dad and I separated, my life has always been split between being a mother and a single, working woman. For better or worse, this is a lifestyle to which I've become accustomed.

Yet I realize my days with this amazing little boy, now arguably a young man, are fleeting and precious. Our bond is, I believe, steel strong. Yet I can never know him, and certainly never love him, enough. I can only try.

So this weekend, when he comes home for the first time since early January, he will find a letter waiting for him on his bed. Here is what it will say:

Dear Robby,

In the weeks you’ve been gone, I’ve been thinking a lot about (and missing!) you.

I came up with a couple questions I’m hoping you’ll answer for me. Take your time. Write them out. Even though some of these may seem hard at first, or are things you’ve never thought about, please try to write an answer for me, even a partial one and we can go from there if you’d like.

As your mom, I may know you better than anyone in your life, but I will never know you well enough. And I think there may be plenty of things about me you don’t know. I’m thinking we can have some fun and learn more about both of us! So .... here goes:

1) What one thing have you wanted to do with me but never have?

2) What one thing about me would you like to know, or know more about?

3) What have you done with me in the past that you really enjoyed but don't get to do often enough?

4) What one thing scares you most?

And here, to wrap this up, is a little message for you:

I want you to know with every breath you take that although the world can be hard and tough sometimes, it's all OK because you are so loved. You are surrounded by souls who would do anything to help you. And not only that - you have wisdom and patience of your own, buried deep inside your being, which will reveal themselves further and grow stronger over time, and carry you through any trial.

Meanwhile, I am here to guide you, love you, and hold you through your greatest joys and any moments of uncertainty.

You are a gift from God to me, to all of us who love you, and those precious and lucky people days and years into your future who have yet to meet you.

Love Always, Mom

I confess this is not my idea. The questions came from a column written by a single dad who, struggling to maintain a bond with his children, penned them occasional letters with questions like these. The message at the end, I'm ashamed as a writer to say, is one modified from the book, "Eat, Love, Pray." Those few paragraphs brought tears to my eyes when I first read them, and even though they are not mine, seemed something Robby - perhaps all children - need to hear. Even more, to know with unwavering certainty.

Hopefully, Robby will offer answers to all these questions. If so, I will share some, if not all of them, with you here.

Meanwhile, I must spend some time in that empty room that is his, hanging clean clothes and Christmas presents that have for weeks occupied space on his bed, dusting, vacuuming and in general, turning it back into a place ready for life, one that welcomes him back. The pillowcases will be smoothed, the pillows fluffed and the comforter smoothed. And on top of it, I will place this single envelope on which will be written two words: "Welcome home!"