Any parent knows this moment in a day –
Its early morning, you are pretty certain you only just heard a sparrow fart outside your window, the faint light of dawn is creeping in through the crack you missed in the blackout curtains, and you hear the bedroom doorknob turn, the pitter patter of tiny feet that despite carrying a mere 30lbs, somehow still manage to drag, that pitter patter gets louder, there is a small human at one side of the bed or the other, depends on who that human needed comfort from this morning, possibly a tug at the quilt like ringing a doorbell, to announce, let me in!
You let em in.
Into the bed, under the warm covers, you mentally make a complaint about how you need a King sized bed and not a Queen and then you remember you live in a city where space is premium, so you make yourself comfortable while accommodating this tiny, warm, human with morning allergies who keeps asking for a tissue to blow his nose while at the same time hugging your neck and whispering how much he loves you and also, “What time does the dinosaur museum open?” “Is school open today?” “Can we go to the noodle shop today?”
You take a deep breath in, inhaling the familiar smell of this human as you nuzzle him to you and sniff at the soft, freshly cut hair right above his ears…and you suddenly have this moment where you want to fucking cry, cry hard…and you find it hard to hold back the tears and before you know it, the tears are coming and you are the one asking for the box of tissues and then you are the one saying that you need to get up, all the sparrows must have farted and crapped by now, its simply time to get up.
Yep, that was me this morning.
The thought that tripped me up and got me teary as fuck was what prompted me to reach an arm over this little human sandwiched between his sleepy father and I, touch my hand on that big, broad, reassuringly stable shoulder of this father of the house, run my hand from his shoulder slowly down to his hand….hold his hand and say, “Sweetie, you better love me until the day I die!”
And he was like, voice still thick with sleep, holding my hand loosely, “Why the hell would I do anything but?”
And I had to say it before my voice gave me away, “Because I will need you when these boys leave me for someone who will love them the way I do!”
I am crying like a baby right now! What the fuck!
My little boys, all three of them. I think with my eldest, I am confident, he will always be my boy, he will always be this aloof yet needy, connected yet distant, unique young man on the borderline of Aspergers and inattention, intelligent as fuck, but still clueless about a lot of things! I love my eldest, I hate his father, hate being a strong word maybe, but I wish his father was a kinder man, kinder to him, kinder to the world, but it was not meant to be, and so I have to share this human life, this human, with a man who isn’t always kind to him. Come what may, he will always be Mama’s boy.
But my two little ones.
My heart breaks a little for these two.
My heart breaks because I think about sons.
No one told me how hard this would be.
Being a mother of only boys. Three sons.
My son will one day grow up and I wish so much for him to love someone who loves him as fiercely as I love him.
One day, my son will leave me for a woman I hope is beautiful in every way, kind to a fault, with a laugh like warm maple syrup that escapes every edge of a pancake, or just soaks all the way in.
A woman who knows herself, or is willing to learn she is not infallible.
A woman that more than anything, looks at my son and knows how lucky she is.
One day there will come a woman who is able to capture my sons attention, make him care about more than just himself, but also understands the sacrifice that takes.
A woman who watches him in the early hour of daylight, as he sleeps, is able to kiss his temple and whisper how much she loves him, with the softest breath against his ear.
A woman that hugs him and means to never let him go.
A woman who will bear him beautiful children and love them with a force of nature that is as calm and at the same time fierce as an eye of a storm.
One day my son will look into the eyes of another woman, like he does to me now, so full of wonder, so full of kindness, so open hearted.
One day my son will hug another woman so tightly, wanting her to know, he will never let her go.
One day my son will be a man, with broad shoulders and big hands that hold little ones in his.
One day my son will have children of his own and I will be just a spec of dust in the time and space of their everyday life.
And that is the day I am gonna need my husband most.
He is going to have to love me till the day I die, not just be there to hold my hand when I go into labor, not just to hold my hand when I get sick, not just to hold my hand through a scary movie, not just to hold my hand as I walk down a flight of stairs with stupidly high heels that he is secretly rolling his eyes about me choosing to wear…
He’s gonna have to hold my hand through the breaking of my heart, as I see my sons leave me, one after another, for someone I fucking hope will love them just as fiercely as I love them.
And I will have to do everything in my power to hold myself back, to let this woman take him…to hold my tongue when she speaks her mind, because, gaddamit she better be a strongwilled woman! She better be a woman who stands her ground, sticks up for her kids or calls out for my son when she needs him. This is what I am going to have to be prepared for.
And I am gonna need my husband to love, love me through it all, and love me after it all, because I will have lost all three sons to other women that I hope will be more amazing, more intuitive, more big hearted, more loving and caring…than I ever was or could have been.
Its the only way I can live through the greatest accomplishment of loss and its the only way I can die at peace, knowing my sons are loved, knowing they are happy, knowing that their world is right side up because someone, someone sees in them all the fascinating potential that I see in them, someone cares enough to say the words out loud, “I love you” & “I am sorry”…because they know, the journey was meant to be for a lifetime of together.
Of course, I am crying like a complete idiot and for all you know, all my sons could be gay.
Which is fine, nothing would bother me about that, but then we have to go back over this blog post and edit it so that it says, “Woman or Man” and then we have to hope to fuck my sons can be rich enough to be able to get a surrogate (assuming surrogates are still legal by that point in the future) or adopt in order to have kids.
And then of course, all that shit is obsolete if my sons grow up to never want kids, like, ever, coz of how I fucked them up in the head, just by being this overemotional basket case of a Mom!
Or maybe they are gonna grow up in a world that becomes so much more messed up than it is now, pollution, over population, disease, that they consider not having kids for moral reasons.
Hmm…
Well, you know what, at least I am not crying anymore! Lol.
God, I love my boys.
I love my husband, so damn much.
Did I ever tell you that I once wrote his mother an e-mail to thank her for her son?
Yep, thats me.
I thanked her for being a good mother, I thanked her for bringing up such an amazing son, and I thanked her with all my heart for this man who loves me and who I love more and more each day. I promised her I would be good to him and that I would always appreciate the effort she put into raising this man.
Wow, ok, there go the waterworks again!
I live in a house filled with testosterone.
One day, I hope to be that person my sons wives can come to. Or, wait, their husbands…or boyfriends, or girlfriends…or whatever the fuck…the point being, I hope I don’t becoming some opinionated old windbag who everyone hates and who smells like stale laundry!
I hope I am gonna be that grandma that is happy to watch the kids. I hope I am gonna be that Mom that feels a flutter in my belly when I see my grown son lean over to kiss his bride. I hope I am gonna be that grandma who gets to hold newborns and coo at them, welcoming them into this world and rejoicing at how I had a hand in it somehow, this wonderful thing we call the circle of life.
Yep.
Gay, straight, heck, whatever the outcome, I honestly hope my kids will live happy and fulfilled lives…and just going from my own life experience, I sure hope they think long and hard before they marry someone and that when they do, its the one they are pretty fucking sure about. I bet it would break my heart many times if it wasn’t, man, my Mum had to be so brave!
And kids…
I hope they have a chance in their life to experience what it is to have kids…just coz, I think its been awesome for me. I never thought I would have kids. I was always the one to say, “Nice to carry and cuddle, but nice to give back!”
And then I had my own…
Even when my eldest was little, even when I left his father before my son turned two, I never regretted the decision to have him. He was so wonderful, he still is. And I seemed, as ill prepared as I was, totally the right person to be his mother.
We grew up together, my son and I…
And now, with these two smaller ones, a whole 12 and 13.5 years younger than my eldest, I get a chance to be a parent at a more normal age, the age that most people got around to being parents their first time around.
Yes, I feel old sometimes, but only sometimes.
I feel old when I realize my eldest will be 18 next year, I feel old when I start planning his drivers license course with him, I feel old when I see how much that teenager can inhale food and still look like a tapeworm victim! *SMH*
Here I am, I just LOOK at food and I gain weight!
Life is so unfair.
I look at the two little ones and I know how handsome they will be when they grow up. Both tall, one a little bit stockier. One who looks like Dad and one who looks like Mum with a unibrow. Gah, they are gonna be so handsome when they are all grown up.
My boys…sigh.
Anyway, those were my musings for the morning.
I literally had to get away from the morning bed so I could write, its like, I had to spit it out, or really, I had to cry at my laptop like some emotionally deranged idiot.
This house, is clean! 😀
Me, Myself & I 