Copyright @ThisNest
Our children are asleep. All five of them – sleeping under our roof. Together. Here.
Tomorrow will be different. Our roof will cover but four of them…and one will be several hundred miles away.
Away. Away from me. Away from us.
I cannot believe I am here now. In this time. In this place. This place that the older women warned me would arrive in the blink of an eye. And I did blink. And it did arrive.
“Oh, he’s so cute.” They would say.
“Enjoy it while it lasts.” They would say.
“Don’t blink.” They would say.
Damn. They were right. I humored their perspectives, and I smiled the way a new mother does as she dotes on her first-born child, and I agreed to “enjoy every moment” to appease those older women…
And I blinked.
Early tomorrow morning I will wrap my arms around him, I will kiss his face, I will smell his hair, I will hold his hand…
And then I will let it go. I will let him go. I will pray over him…and then watch the tail lights fade into the dark morning as his daddy’s car carries him away from me toward the airport.
And I will cry.
I am excited for him. I am hopeful for his future. I am nervous, optimistic, scared, happy, anxious, worried, and grateful.
But most of all…
I am pissed off that those older women were, in fact, telling me the truth.
