These Moments of Motherhood

I needed to go.

But as I stood there for a few moments longer, I realized I didn’t really need to go. Or even want to at that point.

It was the evening of Tuesday, October 19, 2010 and soon I would look at the calendar and it would be October 19, 2025 and he wouldn’t want me hugging him like this anymore.

Instead, he’d be off to college or leaving in some other way, separating from me, not wrapping his little boy hands around my neck and begging me to stay just as he was now.

Someday he would think it was weird that I was running my hands through his soft hair, instead of loving it as he was in this very moment.

And there’s a good chance that on that future date in time I would no longer be the main lady in his life.

So I stood there longer, kissing his little boy face and telling him that I loved him to the moon and back.

That’s when he hugged me harder and said, “Mommy, clouds are pretty.”

And I said, “Yes, honey, they are pretty.”

And then I tickled him in the side, under his arm where he’s especially ticklish, just like his father.

And his little boy giggle filled the room like a song. Just like I hoped it would.

And all the while his older brother lay across the room asking for his own hugs and kisses from me…

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I try.

I try so, SO hard NOT to take being a mother for granted. But there are days that I do. I know it. I’m only human.

And my human-ness shows in both the ways that I yell when my patience is especially thin and the way I hang around at bed time longer and longer when asked by my sweet little boys who will not be little forever.

Motherhood is like so many other things in life in that it has it’s moments (if you know what I mean) but I think it’s also very different in that it has is MOMENTS.

The ones we hope to hold in our hearts forever when we realize how much these little human beings love us and how much we, as their parents, really mean to them in all that we say, do and show them.

I try so hard to be cognizant of that as well.

I’m always trying. Trying to be a better parent. A better mother.

I just hope I’m succeeding at least a little.

And that’s why I stuck around as long as he wanted me to on October 19, 2010.