Boy, Watching You Grow Up is Bittersweet

​Raising a boy is like a never ending tug-of-war between the pride of watching him grow into a young man and longing for him to be little once again.

Somewhere along the way, across all those blurry days, his fresh new baby smell was replaced with the scent of BOY—that wild concoction of sweat, dirt, and some third ingredient you can’t name but would recognize a thousand miles away.

Just as soon as you find yourself yearning to carry him close to your heart once again, you watch him run toward you with a wide grin, holding out a flower he’s picked just for you...and you can’t think of what else you could possibly wish for.

And the only words that make your heart burst as much as that very first “mama” is the wild “love you Mom!” shouted between monkey bar reaches from the playground.

My rough-and-tumble
rowdy and raucous
sweet, sensitive, soulful
boy...

perhaps the only thing more lovely than the memories of yesterday are the ones we’re making today. Those days, these days, & the ones in between have been the pleasure of my life.