I'm hiding out with my laptop in a dark corner of the dining area in my home. The "kids" are finally settled here with me now after their last day of school and they're already in summer break mode, taking over the big screen TV with video games, sprawling out on the lounge chair with the massage at full tilt and let's not forget the ever present evidence of their continual feasting: paper plates supporting only crumbs, water bottles, empty wrappers ... etc. I use the quotes in the aforementioned reference to my offspring because "kids" they will always be to me but unless I clarify, you might envision short people of ages in only the single digits. That was the case here at the Fuller house a few summers ago, and even as I remember last summer in my sentimental motherly way, even though they were going full force into adolescence then, their physical growth over the last four months is unnerving me today.
Because today, as I hover at my keyboard, secretly recording this memory, I glance over at them after I type every two sentences, wondering what happened. There's not a day that has passed in the last three months that my son hasn't found me in the kitchen to hug me ... or what I think is only going to be a hug actually turns out to be a complete interruption of my kitchen duties so he can pick me up a foot off the floor and swing me around in circles until he decides I may be placed on terra firma once again. I've given up any protest at all. He thinks he's showing great affection and that it's funny that I appear defeated and annoyed after the experience. I think it's funny too ... or I thought it was, until today. When I realize he's not the only one who changed on me because, 'lo and behold, all of his friends have also betrayed me! I'm watching them as I write and they have no idea the about the mini panic attack I'm having about what the coming summer months hold for us now.
It wasn't like this last summer. Last summer my daughter didn't have boys asking for her number on the last day of school. Bazinga! Exactly. Now I'm just waiting for that moment when I look over and she's smiling and blushing and ... texting THAT BOY. Ay yay yay.
Scott and I have never been the parents who limit our kids' time with technology. Whether it's time on the phone sending texts or playing video games, we just don't believe in the "control the technology" strategy. We figure our best bet to keeping them safe and healthy is to let their phases (whatever they are) run their course and teach them how to "do it right" as we go. So far, so good. That being said, can I just say that these kids have progressed far beyond my technology skill set in many areas? They teach us now.
That's why I'm looking at them all so strangely today. These are adult sized people that have preferences and knowledge and skills that, get this: I DID NOT IMPART TO THEM. And that's the way it should be. They need so much more than me. But, suffice it to say, this bittersweet reality is hitting me all at once since I'm about to spend each summer day with them, looking up at them, or eye to eye as it is with my beautiful daughter, shopping for her and wishing I could still fit into some of those cute outfits she gets to wear now, but seriously ... every day I spend with them is, at the same time, one less day I have to fully be "their mom".
I understand it's "once a mom, always a mom" ... but I have the foreboding sense that as a mom, I'm in my prime ... and my prime is fading. Slowly, but surely.
Last summer, my son spent most of his time on video games. Fine with me. This summer, since he told his dad he'd like to look into architecture, he'll hit construction sites and talk to project managers and maybe other architects. In between these events he'll keep in shape by running in the heat for cross-country in the fall and probably catch a few video games too, of course, and don't forget the endless steak dinners. And you know I'm proud, otherwise I wouldn't brag about all of this in a blog ... but at the same time, there's a small part of me in total TERROR!
Now, it's just a small part of me in terror ... but it's the part of me that has fallen completely off the cliff. I'm trying to keep it all in perspective. But if I'm going to be honest, that small, terrorized part of me giving into the panic represents the HUGE part of me that senses the ripping apart of my own being as these "kids" step closer and closer to the time in their life when they will spend more days without me than they ever had with me. I remember in the doctor's office a couple of days after my eighteenth birthday being diagnosed with insulin-dependent diabetes. Strangely, the news of my deteriorated health wasn't what I was concerned with. The first question out of my mouth was, "Can I still have kids?" I was young, but being a mom was my big dream.
When I was in college (I went back to school after both of my kids were in elementary), a few semesters into it, my friend and software programming mentor asked me what I was going to do with all of my new found technical skills. Would I go to graduate school? Would I step out as a consultant? Would I work for a large firm? Take on a few internships? His last question ... What was my dream?
I remember my answer bringing him to tears as I talked about my kids. There will never be another dream that I have that tops them. EVER.
I'll spend this summer getting to know them as young people. I'll cry a little at night after everyone goes to bed because my "kids" left me at some point this last school year between Graham's district cross-country meet and Macy's first pair of heels, and I didn't even get to kiss those sweet cheeks good-bye.
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