I am grateful for loving my children all so differently but with the same magnitude.
Today is #5’s birthday. My last child is now six years old.
With my eldest daughter, I still navigate unchartered waters which makes me feel like such an inexperienced newbie mama sometimes. I see her growing into a young adult and she is trailblazing a path for her sisters and brother. But that last child…that last child is the one I want to stay. I want him to linger in little-dom. If he could just call me mama again in that voice, that delicate and innocent plea when he needs to curl up in my arms, my status as a seasoned mother stays solidified because I know how to be a mama to littles. I have done it before.
But he has managed to teach me how to let go more than my seventeen-year-old daughter. He gravitates to his father. He follows my husband everywhere he goes. He wants to dress like him. My son waits to do the latest Lego project with him. He waits outside on the porch with his glove to play catch with him even though I can play catch too. He chooses to go with Dad when we have to split up. Instead of trying to keep him close to me, I have loosened the lifeline to me. I know that this relationship to his father is important just as mine are to my daughters. But early in the morning, before sisters are awake, he finds me. It’s as if it’s in the dreamworld where he remembers our connection. He groggily makes his way to my lap and snuggles in. This is the fate of mothers and sons. My daughters will push me away and pull me in over and over again, torn between wanting to be like me and rejecting me. But my son will slowly pull away. He will enter a world where his mother can’t follow.
But today I will hold him. I will keep brushing his hair to the side until he swats my hand away. I will shower him with kisses and hold his hand until the day he finds it gross. I will let him sleep with us when he needs to because one day he won’t. And I will wait every morning for him to come find me until the day he outgrows sitting on mama’s lap.
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42 days of gratitude…giving thanks to it ALL…
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My “42 days of gratitude project” has come to an end. Tomorrow I will post what I have learned in the process…
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