Be Careful What You Wish For…

  In the last couple of weeks on Facebook I just can’t escape the posts from moms expressing jubilant relief that their kids are finally back in school. I’m not talking about the sweet photos of littles heading  off for the first time.  I’m talking about the elementary school kids, the middle schoolers, and the high school students. I’ve seen photos of moms clinking glasses in celebratory toasts, lounging in the pool, and enjoying lunch at quaint restaurants with names like Not Peter Piper Pizza.  Totally fun things that we should have fun doing.   But, still . . .  Don’t get me wrong.  I do understand How. Hard. Being home. All the time. With the kids. Can be. I was a full-time stay-at-home mom for more than a decade. Even now that my body is at an office for 25 hours a week, my heart is still fully at home.  I remember summers of squabbling and “I’m bored.”  I remember the severe limitations on my own freedom.    But I also remember that August swiftly turned to December and I then I blinked and it was May.  And they were another year older and closer to moving on into their adulthood.  Away from me. And I know it’s my purpose to work myself out of this job.  The function of motherhood is significantly front-loaded.  There is an end game.   But, still . . . I walk through the house this morning after my boys have left for school, picking up the hastily dropped damp towels from their bedroom floors, loading the breakfast dishes that only made it into the sink into the dishwasher, mentally planning tonight’s dinner, and thinking toward my own work day ahead of me.  I miss them. I know they have lives to live and things to do that they must do on their own.  They are growing and becoming more and more independent of me.  They are turning into who they are supposed to be.  That is a good thing.   But, still . . . I have greeted each year of my boys’ lives with a bittersweet commemoration.  I have loved watching them learn new things and experience new things and become new people.  I loved who they were as toddlers and I love who they are as teenagers.  I make my lips tell them how wonderful it is that they are inching closer to an incredible new phase of their lives out in the world away from home, even as there is a catch in my throat and a twist in my chest as I say it. In my home this year, the velocity of the August to December to May trajectory is particularly torturous.  May is graduation month for my first born.  My time with him feels like mere desperate moments.  I cry a lot – at random times from seemingly random promptings.  Does he know how much his simple presence and physical proximity is a treasure to me?  Can he see that I believe Psalm 127:3 with every fiber of my being?  I hope so.  I want both of my boys to know that I desire to be with them all the time even as I fully embrace the ultimate goodness that they cannot, should not, and will not. So I get it.  I know what is really meant by these Facebook posts.  I know these are good moms with the same heart for their children as I have for mine.  I know that they are just temporarily weary of the 24/7/365 reality that is the defining rhythm of being a mom.  I get it.  It’s just that someone once reminded me not to wish it all away.   Because that wish comes true whether you crossed your fingers while making it or not.