Friday, January 17, 2014

There will come a day

There will come a day when your son is taller than you. When he walks out the door with his friends. Wears a uniform. Makes decisions without you. 

There will come a day when your daughter walks confidently through doors. The high school doors, college doors, the door to her first job or her first boyfriends house. There will come a day when she doesn't want you to hold her. When she can fix her own hair. When she says, cheerfully, "Bye mom!" and all you can do is watch her back as she makes her way, by herself. 

There will come a day when the house is quiet. When you are by yourself. When you sit down and can read a book without interruption or take a bath without a little hand appearing underneath the door. Without a little voice saying, "Mommy? Are you in there?"

There will come a day when the silence is almost deafening. When you look forward to them coming home, just so they'll be in the house, even if they are busy. Even if they are online, doing homework or laughing at Minecraft videos. Even if there are four extra kids in the house and they are being loud. Just because they are in the house. 

There will come a day that you miss the baths, the rocking chair, the endless hours of Spongebob. There will come a day that you watch the back of your babies head walk out the door, into the world, and you miss the little curls that used to be at the nape of their neck. The day will come that, God help you, you miss the mess. The neverending games of Monopoly. The endless questioning. The hours of homework that you don't remember how to do. 

There will come a day that you miss the hard days. The long days. The days where nothing seems to go right. You look at the day you have now, and on the surface, it seems much easier. They don't make a mess now, and if they do they clean it up. They can cook for themselves, do their own laundry. They don't need as much help. Every day you wake up though, you know. It's just one day closer to them being a grown-up. Moving away. Having their own lives. It's exactly what you want, but at the same time? You will miss the days that you took for granted. You will wish you had spent less time working, less time with your face in a screen. You will wish there had been more vacations. More campfires. More time.


You'll wish for those hard days back. Because you'll just wish you had more time.

6 comments:

queenrandom said...

That was really beautiful :)

Theresa said...

Wow. So beautiful and so sad at the same time.

Meegs said...

Tears.

Lynn said...

I'm nobody's mother so I will never know this, the good and the bad. Try to be happy you've had it. :)

Anonymous said...

Yes. That day has come here.

Lisa in nj said...

wow you just made me cry at work...and you just made me realize my son at 12 is now going to be hitting all of these stages and I better prepair now. Tears really falling now...