Photo Credit: transplanbuddies.org
Over the years I’ve written many columns on my life with my children.
A soccer mom’s Sunday
Is an awful lot like Monday
It’s prying and vying and sighing and trying
To get everything done
That needs to be done
I’ve written about running a household.
It’s loading the dishes
And containing the wishes
Of husband and children
And your own unfulfilled dreams
Of the importance of just being there.
It’s picking up clutter
As you hear them all mutter
“Ma, you’re blocking the TV
Please move
So that we can see.”
Of the struggle to maintain a home replete with calm and good spirits.
It’s bringing order to chaos
And chaos to order
In a never ending battle
With boredom and fatigue
Of the realization that it’s tempting to place your relationship with your partner on the back-burner when strife and trouble come-a-calling.
I laugh at life’s ironies
While fighting despair
I long for my husband
Even though he’s right there
And I acknowledge that at timers there’s a difference, a very large difference, between what’s printed and what’s felt.
I write to “Keep Coping”
Instead of just moping
When all I’d like to do
Is climb back in bed
With a good book
And a box of vanilla fudge
Over the years I’ve written many columns on the eve of my sons graduating and moving on – from pre-school to kindergarten, from grammar school to middle school, from junior high to high school and from high school to college.
The latter move is always the most wrenching for me. I’m not the one at graduations incessantly snapping pictures or craning to capture the perfect moment on video. I’m the one huddling in the corner, writing furiously on a napkin, in an effort to put in words what I’m experiencing as my youngest child walks down the aisle to the strains of Pomp & Circumstance.
And when the kids are so little
It’s wishing they’d grow up
And when they are older
It’s wishing they’d just show up
To shed some magic glow
On my endless routine
And I’m not the one making scrapbooks. I figure my published thoughts will be my legacy to my five grandchildren and one on the way.
I muse as I cry. And cry as I muse. And I know I’m not alone.
I know there are many mothers out there that can’t believe that beautiful little child they birthed 18 years ago is leaving the nest. And taking their heart. I was in that club too many years ago.
So, in closing, please note my heartfelt wish: May yours venture forth safely and return home often.