This Too Shall Pass...

When you are the mother of a son you have a very difficult mission. To successfully bring up any child, but particularly a son, your job is to endow them with confidence to stand on their own 2 feet. With a son you see them take these tentative steps away from the nest way too frequently. It comes with little things such as calling you mom instead of mommy (a REALLY hard one for me), not wanting to be kissed in public, or valuing their friends' opinions where once mine was the most important. I accept these things and want them to be strong men who are successful on their own, but still hug on their mommy! It just seems to be going too fast.

When the storms came through we let the kids fall asleep on the couch. When Jon was carrying a sleeping Jackson to his bed he came in the bedroom and told me, "Look at our baby!" Jackson's feet almost dragged the floor when Jon was holding him. We just stood there looking at him wondering how this happened so fast! In 18 days he will be 7. That sounds so old!

With these things ever in my mind, I try to appreciate every loving thing he does. I saw a scrapbook page in a magazine that said, "We always seem to take pictures of their firsts, but I wish we could know to take pictures of their lasts."

In the last few weeks, my son will just come up and wrap his arms around my waist and stand there. He never says anything and I don't either for feer of embarassing him. I just kiss his head and hold on. I close my eyes and try to use all my senses to remember the exact feel of these moments, to "treasure them in my heart" to pull out decades from now and relive. His head rests much higher now when he hugs me and I don't have to bend down far to kiss the top of his head. The days of wrapping his arms around my leg are gone. He wraps his arms around my waist now, and I just hold on knowing the day is coming when I will wrap my arms around his waist and praying that I raise a son who will, even then as a grown man, hold on and bend his head down to kiss the top of his mine.

Just now as he hugged me like this he said, "I just can't seem to stop hugging you."

I looked into his sweet little face and said, "Promise me you'll never stop, even when you're as big as daddy."

He just smiled, nodded, and lay his head against me. Now I have his promise and look forward to experiencing our relationship as it evolves over the years. I will be so proud when he does finally leave the nest and know he will soar, so proud in fact I'll have to give him lots of hugs to celebrate! After all, he promised...