Birthday lesson

Today my son, my first born child, turns 24 years of age at 3 pm .  I have been a mother for 24 years. Though, actually I have been a mother for longer than that. Add the nearly 10 months I carried him and shared all my cells with him. 

In thinking back over the years, flashing the highlights and churning through the challenges like small movie clips in my brain, I have come to realize that this is the anniversary of a LARGE and ongoing lesson of letting go. The physical labor was part of releasing him from my domain. With God and my husband and the staff of Sharon hospital, I brought him into the world. I’ve nurtured him through illness, made sure he got an education, fed him, and clothed him, but basically this was all so that he would be readily and handily prepared for life on his own.

You don’t get the manual the day they are born, because the tools vary from family to family. I’ve learned from other mothers, especially my stepmother (who shares this birthday as well) that it takes faith to raise a child. I’ve learned that nothing lasts forever, and to try to be present in the moments. I’ve learned to honor my son’s talk about joining a war, or when he share his battles with an addiction, or, hardest of all, when he has to deal forever more with a broken heart. I’ve been schooled by his unique perspective, bowled over by his powers of insight and story telling, moved by his unfailing good heart, and am proudest of all of his compassionate and empathic character. It has been my good fortune to be his mother.

Can you imagine how hard it is not to cling to such a divine creature? I am learning to let him go.

me with both my sons, last summer