Dawning of a New Age

With the holidays coming and just as quickly going, I've been feeling an intangible sense of loss. I left the house early this morning, kissing my sleeping five-year old's warm cheek and whispering endearments. As I tiptoed downstairs, I was able to pinpoint what's been melancholically hounding me. I've been grieving my son's childhood. Silly really, given that he's only five going on six. But still, witnessing his almost dogmatic belief in all things "Santa," I recognize how fleeting it all is. Each inch he grows makes me shrink a little inside. The older he gets, the less of me he'll need. The less he currently needs. I witness him slyly wiping my kisses from his cheeks (at least he still comes for kisses). I can already feel the loss of his sweet confidences, those heartfelt hugs and even his unruly tears that I've known as a first-time mom.

I'm already grieving the loss of my son.

These feelings of loss have begun to make me think of motherhood as time-limited, a vocation that requires unlimited amounts of gear; mittens with strings and zippers, car seats, bags of Cheerios. As I slowly begin to put away childish things, I worry that I will have outlived my usefulness to him. Relegating myself to just a sweet-and-sour relic of our past.
I expressed these irrational and baseless fears to a friend with three older sons of her own and she was quick to assuage me (something a wise woman had done for her years past).  Paying it forward.

She was able to help me synthesize something I knew intellectually but didn't wholly believe emotionally. It's a given that I'll miss my little boy, but the future relationship he and I will share will bring on an entirely new layer of love. As he grows older, he will continue to need me. Differently, but equally as urgently, as he once did. Against me he shall practice his beliefs, juxtaposed against those we've tried to instill in him. And he'll begin the cleave and cling of courtships based on what he's learned from his and my relationship. These things I know, but they tend to be obscured by the ever-present feeling of movement, of growth and of change.

Nevertheless, love that changes isn't love lost; just as mist and ice are only water in another form. And equally as lovely.

I will always be a mother and I will always matter.  Yes, I will always be a mother and I will always matter.

Nice lessons to learn as the New Year dawns.