I’m feeling very emotional today. I suppose I tend to do this every Christmas season. Oh, let’s be honest…I do this sporadically throughout the year. Okay…a lot.
With our children, we welcome the next milestone with anticipation. Naturally. But I’m feeling this overwhelming desire to push back. My “bigs” are pre-teens…on their way to becoming a young lady and a young man. Not that I’ve given up on keeping them young and innocent, because I do still try, but they simply won’t let themselves be babied anymore. So, my hope for Reef, is that he continues being my baby for a really…really long time. I want a million more open-mouthed kisses. I want to hold his chubby wee hand in the palm of mine a gazillion more times. Hear his high-pitched little giggle…well, forever.
I had heard "Sunrise, Sunset." I'd been warned there would be a time to let go and that the moment would be bittersweet. But I pictured this letting-go happening once, maybe twice: on my child's first day of school, and the day he drove off to college.
But in fact the act of letting go is gradual. Every year, I find myself mourning my son's slow exit from childhood. I can hardly look at photos of our now-12-year-old as a toddler without a lump forming in my throat. I miss the child he was; I want to hold on to the kid he is now. And just when I think I grasp who he is this second, he changes again.
Writing that makes me weepy.
Knowing the pure desire of my heart, God blessed me again with another “little.” A new “sunrise.” In so many ways, he’s awakened the loving, free-spirited woman of my twenties. I find myself trying to see the world through his eyes…the complexity and size of everything around him, the love he possesses for his family all the way down to his “silky”, that locking himself in a pitch black bathroom is scary because it’s the absence of everything he knows and loves, that even the Chewbaca and rhinocerous and musical Santa Claus sitting on the shelves are as real as our friends, that the opportunity to go outside and run is what real freedom feels like…unlike our adult selves, these “littles” take nothing for granted.
But every now and then they forget we're connected, or pretend to, and they’ll morph into a slightly younger version of themselves. On those days, I’m usually quiet, taking it all in, but sometimes we’ll talk about the future and what it might bring. They’ll tell me about all the adventures he/she can't wait to begin, and while talking I notice how much taller he/she seems, or how much more grown-up his/her face is beginning to look. It's as if I can already see the next older version of them, somewhere up ahead.
I listen, and I hold on a little tighter.
Oh Mandi .... I'm speechless!
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