Ruminations of a mother on Mother’s Day.

Ruminations of a mother on Mother’s Day.

The feelings are too inexplicable and profound to put in words, so we focus on the moments.

The endless moments where you lay in the crook of my arm, nursing, cooing, and both of staring into each other’s eyes, searching but knowing.

Endless moments of getting down on the floor with you because you couldn’t get the bridge and roundabout to “honnect” the way you needed it to for Thomas, James and Edward to follow their destinies.

Endless moments of you flying through the house with a red shirt around your neck as Captain Underpants of course; then suddenly, a switch to Legomania – you are a grand creator of infinite Lego worlds, characters, you know them intimately and narrate their stories. It’s all on tape.

Endless moments of light saber fights. You are frustrated with my technique.

Then sometime in middle school, the physicality transforms into mentality. Endless new ideas. Our first Apples to Apples game stuns me. How do you have so much to say about such random topics?

Suddenly I can talk to you about virtually any topic. The pros and cons of capitalism vs communism. People’s need for religion. Gun control. You have opinions. You stand up for them.

And then your father dies and I wonder how traumatic it will be for a 13-year old to lose his father. I ask if you want to see a therapist, and you say don’t understand why you should talk to a stranger when we can talk about everything.

You tell me that in many ways, his death has freed you to be more of who you really are.

You blossom. I turn around, and there you are, standing tall in your Boy Scout uniform, decorated with numerous pins and badges, conducting a flag ceremony. There you are in your first suit, dancing with girls, and women, at a cousin’s wedding. There you are, giving a speech in front of your 3,600 classmates, exhorting them to vote for you. And then, oh the heart-stopper… there you are in a tuxedo, singing medieval songs in Latin with your choir at the Notre Dame.

You know exactly how to soothe your grandmother, without any prompting from me. You take charge when a delayed BART train makes us late for our flight home, and then comfort me when it’s clear we will not make it, even though you’re the one who will miss an important Math test. You have provided in-depth analyses of everyone in our lives according to the Myers-Briggs test. You remind me constantly that there’s simply no need to worry about the past or future.

I feel I have so little to teach you anymore. I can only be there for you as a sounding board. I can only observe in utter awe, at the man you are becoming.

You are now a little over a year away from college. I’m not sure how I will adjust to the absence of your delicious presence. I sometimes feel like regressing to how you behaved as a toddler and I went off to work. I want to cry, and whine that you shouldn’t leave me. I want to hang onto your leg for dear life. Now that you’re 6’7”, the height proportions are about comparable too.

But I won’t embarrass you. Although you somehow never cringe when I hug and kiss you, even in front of your friends. You don’t event shut me down when I tell the poop stories – you know when your diaper exploding in the middle of the night and you were coated in the stuff by morning.

These are the moments, but they are just the moments. It’s these and everything in between.