So it's been a little while.
I'm not sure why either. Partly because school, work, kids, residency, life. Partly because I've felt a little silent. Or maybe just exhausted. The class that I started taking in January was pretty brutal, plus I started working full-time. I think between the homework and writing for school and the 445 a wakeups with the go, go, go all day long life just wipes me out. I think for a long while, I was treading water, if you will, just trying to stay afloat. But Mother's Day was just over a week ago and the scars cracked open a bit. I've spent a lot of time reflecting on life and grief and happiness and hope and how it all ties together to make this beautiful, broken existence.
It's dreary and a little bit foggy this morning as I write. We've had a really warm and dry spring lately and yesterday was a day of slow, calm drizzle. It was a welcome change, the rain. Now its starting to dry out and the birds are singing and the world outside my window is green. Deep, dark evergreen, bright, electric spring green. And everything in between. The big leaf maple outside my back door is already sporting leaves bigger than my head and there are three little peppers ripening on the plant in my front yard. As the seasons change from spring to summer and the rhythm of our life shifts to later nights and lazier mornings and most of life happening out of doors, the memories and experiences also shift. In a way, a part of me is frozen in that last year we had with Jameson. I see it even with the seasonal shifts. This is the kicking off the last summer of shiny in our lives. May-August of that year was amazing. It's so good to remember. It inspires me to keep carpe dieming the crap out of life, too.
Not only does this seasonal shift have me feeling all nostalgic, but this week, my Little Man hits double digits. He's not so little anymore. And I've been a mom for a cool decade now. How did that happen? He's my whole heart all bundled up into a boy and I can't even begin to say what he means to me without swelling with so much love I might burst and die just thinking about it. And he turns ten, which seems so big and round and momentous.
He's ten and she's just a little over four and exactly the same age he was when his brother got sick. I look at Little Lady and think she seems so young; all of my memories of Little Man at that age are all so big and he seemed so much more grown up in my memories. But I suppose that happens when life get all crazy like it did. It's overwhelming, though, to see her and remember him and the whole lost year where we were so lost and gone and he was lost and everything was big and scary and chaotic and then quiet and sad and lonely. And I wish I could go back and just hold him and protect him and let him be as little as he should have been able to be.
And he's ten. And I'm going to blink and he'll be eighteen, so, really, I should just never blink ever again, I suppose. It's so cliche, but annoyingly true how fast it goes by. And you never believe it when they are little and you are in the throes of spit up and poopy diapers and fatigue and the whining and the fantasies change from exotic beach vacations with umbrella drinks and naps in the sun to really, just being able to pee alone and take five minutes without feeling guilty. But its so true, that it flies by. And all of a sudden, they are big and independent and it's a little startling how you can just blink and have a ten year old.
Luckily, he's still only ten. Ad really, nine for a few more days. And he still needs me to wake him up and pack his lunch and he still wants to snuggle on the couch and read together, even if it happens a little fewer and farther between. He has such a big heart and I'm so glad he's mine. And I'd love to keep writing, but I have to go wake him up for the THIRD time so we aren't too late to school. Already acting like a teenager....
