My “little” boy’s carefree childhood days are numbered. I feel it. He talks now of science and PEMDAS and a burgeoning love of algebra. He wants to be an engineer. And “the best basketball player ever.” He’s been in his first playground fight. And, embarrassed, told me that he hears kids his age say “suck a d***”. He says he doesn’t want to be like them. He asked me tonight if I could buy clippers and cut his hair like I use to back in the day. (“Because I look better with it short, Mom.”) And my heart lurches with realization that my career in mothering now includes phrases like “back in the day.” Wasn’t he just fresh and tiny and mewly, screaming and purple and beautiful there on that hospital birthing bed? That was five seconds ago, was it not?
But in this shot he was mad at me. And he was brooding. That’s all he does though. Broods. He is never rude or unkind. But, it’s moments like these that I feel acutely that he’s no longer mine. Not in the way he once was. The way he was when the doctor laid him on my chest, with Kevin looking on us both with wonder.
No. He belongs to no one but himself.
And that is both exhilarating and terrifying.