Let Go The Reins

Everything feels against the wire for Philly.  This is his last year in high school.  I can feel the pressure of his transition into adulthood pressing down on him.  It is hard at times to sit back and let him figure it all out on his own.  I give him support and remind him how capable is.  I remind myself that I have to let him carve his own path, just like I did his older brother. He really is doing a great job. I beam with pride at his capabilities. 

My sons have taught me more about myself than anyone else I’ve known in my life.

He has access to a scholarship which will pay for most of his college.  Grants will pick up the rest.  Where once he was considering going for a football scholarship, I am so glad he didn’t end up doing what he really did NOT want to do; play football in college. I never wanted him to feel the need to have to walk in his father’s footsteps.  He is his own person.

He is job searching, figuring it all out, wondering, worrying, making decisions, and I breathe deep.  I am wistful and full of angst.  I wonder where the next few years will take us.  I miss my eldest son.  He seems so far away in Nevada.  It is a bittersweet feeling, this separation of these young men I adore so deeply. 

Those moments when they were small, when I, on nights of exhaustion, let that thought cross my mind of “I’ll be glad when they’re grown”; they were all lies.  I’m not always glad they’re grown.  Sometimes I miss their little chubby hands, the drooling on my shirts, and the way they looked so adoring at me when they lifted their little heads from their naps. At times I long for their hands curled around my finger, and their mouth against my breast, and the oneness we had of mother and child.

I stand back, and I watch them.  I whisper a prayer from my lips that I did okay, that I prepared them enough, that I didn’t damage them too much from my own mistakes.  Then I let the reins slip from my hand, and I wish them angel wings as they fly into the world to live as men.