I have been thinking about my role as a mother lately. As I embrace the return of my children to my twenty-four hour care, I find myself not overwhelmed by them, but overwhelmed by the depth of my belonging to this role called mother. I have yet to feel the full effects of this thing called summer, but I am certainly feeling the finality of a series of endings.
Maybe it was the noticeable change in my youngest son's voice. Once husky and sweet, it is now hesitant and monotone, deeper, and not yet familiar. Perhaps it is the independent streak in my daughter, the baby, who still climbs up on my lap. yet skips away happily when another offer comes forth. More certainly, it is the transition of my eldest who is leaving behind junior high for the lofty heights of high school. The realization that I really love him as a person, has sent new fears to my heart that in three years time I will lose him, in the way that is expected, yet dreaded by mothers not ready to deliver their children to adulthood. As I watched him receive his diploma (a now common rite of passage from kindergarten to high school. apparently) and enjoyed the slide show of changes as the students travelled the path from grade seven to nine, I felt like bolting. I cannot explain it. As tall as his father, I don't feel ready to hand him over to this rapid transition. I remember feeling the same way on elementary registration day for my daughter: half annoyed that "these people" were dictating the submission of my youngest child. Preposterous really, when you think if it. Someone else is to be trusted with the children you had previously not let out of your sight?
The emotion ends full circle. I feel such a deep sense of gratitude that I have been entrusted in this role. I am so proud to wear the label, and honoured that these children love me back. I have always known it and felt this way, but somehow knowing that a season is closing in on me faster than I'd like sobers me, and makes me appreciate this gift I have been given.
This role, and these children, has and always will be my greatest gift.
One word of advice: the tough parts of parenting will ease, but the depth of your feelings will multiply until the day you die. Of this I am certain.
Appreciate your role.
