How sweet it is…
I sit now alone in my house.
I look forward to having Liam here for the summer after his semester in France.
I’m happy that Noah popped by to say hello on his way to a technology convention this weekend in Detroit.
I’m warmed by the phone call from Mexico I had with Johannah today.
I laughed at the easy exchanges with Caitrin and Jacob through text and snapchat.
Each of my adult children—they are actively a part of my every day life (isn’t that awesome?), even when some of them live thousands of miles away. What a time to be alive! A technological miracle.
I got to thinking…
How sweet it is…
- to have a relationship with each adult child that is new and old at the same time
- to be included in my grown kids’ lives, even while they also make amazing independent choices that I get to witness and celebrate
- to look back fondly at all the soccer, lacrosse, baseball, and ultimate frisbee matches I attended, cheering till I lost my voice
- to feel good about all the weekends I stayed in town, not traveling to conventions for business, so I could be at recitals and marching band events, winter guard competitions and play rehearsals
- to recall the read alouds when I’m on the phone with Brave Writer parents, knowing I really did read all those books from my rocker, knowing that my kids really did hear all those stories in my own voice
- to have scraps of paper and print outs and notes of the clever things my children said, and the wonderful things they wrote, and the surprising skills they developed—all stored where I can return to them when I want to remember
- to see my kids develop political and compassionate selves, to listen to their forming opinions and be challenged by their unique insights
- to travel to see them in new places, watching them master foreign languages and life abroad
- to remember their births—their innocent faces—and to know them now fully grown; to see that thread of personhood evolve to this new person I love in whole new ways
- to have lived at a time when homeschooling was an option, to have discovered that option, to have taken that risk
- to have grown up with my children, to have become a better version of me because of who they are and who we were together
- to have found our way even when we felt lost, even when we flailed and doubted, and struggled
- to rise, to change, to adapt
How sweet it is (truly)…
- to miss them
I love our reunions and I love the partings because when they go, they take what we created together with them, and then they do the big bold beautiful things I couldn’t even imagine they’d do!
I knew this day at my kitchen counter alone would come. It is here. For all the challenges and uncertainties of homeschooling, I am deeply grateful for the closeness that lifestyle choice afforded us.
I wish you this moment in your future too. xoxo
For more blog posts about motherhood:
