ohbloodyhell8

I don’t know how it happened.  I do know when it happened.  This is the summer of my discontent.  My sons have taken the first step to independence and I have become chopped liver.  Their world was parent-centric.  Now it’s play-outside-all-day-and-what-do-you-mean-I-have-to-come-in-centric.

Yes, I’m happy for them.  Yes, it’s means they’re growing up just like we want them to, with independence and confidence.  Yes, it means so many wonderful things.

But, first I’m going to have myself a bit of a pity party.

Where are my babies?

Okay, pity party’s over.  What an exciting time.  Yeah, yeah, for them, but I mean for me and my hubby.  We could pick up our hobbies again.  Heck, I’ve already been cast in a show.  I’m going to rehearsal tomorrow and the boys have to come with me, instead of me going with them.  My husband and I have had actual conversations in the recent weeks.  Conversation that were uninterrupted by “Mom, he’s touching me.”  I’ve been completing whole thoughts all at once.  I’ve been working on house projects, including catching up on Hugh Laurie and House.  I’ve done, dare I write it, reading for FUN and the book was a grown-up book with no pictures.  I’m current in the grading for my summer class.

While it is hard to think that the early childhood years have almost passed, it is invigorating to know that the early work took hold.  Our sons are getting it.  No, not perfectly-we really need to work on that talking back to your mother thing-but they are problem solving, compromising, sharing, thinking of others, and having fun with their friends.  They have entered that time of their life when they have secrets that mean the world that they forget the following week.  They make secret clubs and handshakes.  They can do anything, be anything.  It’s the time of youth when everyday objects hold magical powers, the days are never long enough, and the plans they make will really happen.   This summer marks the beginning of one of the best times of their lives and, oh my sweet sons, I am so happy for you.

It’s like the summer in It when the six of them first battle It.  Okay, I don’t hope that my sons end up in the bowels of the sewers battling a monster so hideous one can only call it It, but this is like that summer.  The summer of innocence when a child can still believe in monsters and the tooth fairy.  This won’t be their only summer like this, they’ll have four or five more, but this is the first one for them.  One of the boys they play with (an older boy, he’s 11) is in his last summer of innocence.  You can see it changing for him.  Some days he can completely suspend disbelief, other days he struggles and usually goes home.  The summers of suspension of disbelief.  They’re awesome.

My job now is to let them have their grand adventures.  To let them believe.  To quickly bandage their scrapes so they can back out there.  To hug them when their feelings are hurt and they’re never going to talk to so-and-so again (at least till they’re back outside talking to so-and-so again).  I’ve got to say, it hurts just a wee bit to let them have the space and time away from the “safety” of home.  But only until one of them runs in to get a toy, and pauses to come to me, wrap his arms around me, and say, “I love you, Mom.”  Then the hurt is not so bad.