Bye Bye Baby

    

As a grown woman (it actually pained me to type that), I am no stranger to heartbreak. Grade school crushes gone bad, middle school angst, high school puppy love and a few "he must be the one(s)" in college that thankfully weren't. Yet, of all my heartache, I never once thought that one day my son would be the source of this type of pain...and yet here I find myself sniffling and trying to put my big girl panties on and get over it. My son, the one whom my mother prayed would be just like me (spite?..or did she just really really love me so much that she wanted another one of us in the world?!...jury's still out) knows my buttons. I've written about this before. He knows what gets me. He knows what pushes me to the brink. He knows he can crush me by dismissing me so casually when I'm vying for his time and he knows he can bring me back with his sly little glance and a sweet kiss or a squeeze on the neck. But what he can't help or take back is growing up. It's gotta be done and I'm going to let it happen if it kills me...I mean for pete's sake I certainly don't want to be one of those mothers that Freud had so often alluded to. It's just SOOO hard. This of course brings us to the first day of Pre-K and his first bus ride.(Two torturous events on two different days). He rocked it. I mean, he was awesome. He wasn't clingy, he wasn't scared- he was confident, self assured, just like we've raised him to be.......so what's the problem? Did I want him to hug a little harder, protest a smidge? No. And that's the truth. It's just hard to let your baby go, you know?