The boy with soggy shoe laces and muddy fingernails.
The boy who was such a "mamma's boy" that I was afraid he would be living in my basement at 50.
The baby who cried unless he could see me.
Where did he go?
Where did this grown man come from?
I still see that little boy with the round soft doughy cheeks and bowl hair cut that never sat right in the back. I can still feel his sticky little hands on my cheeks. My God, how did this happen? How did this boy grow up so fast?
Too much time wasted on things that didn't matter as he grew up right beneath my nose. I feel as though I squandered his childhood, as though it would never end. We didn't take enough fishing trips, or cuddle enough, or talk enough... is it ever enough?
I worry about him so far away. He is on the trip of a lifetime and he deserves this. I worry that traveling as an Aspie can be hard or even dangerous. He is with people who know him. They know he would loose his head if it weren't firmly attached, they know how forgetful he is, they know how easily he misreads things. I know he is safe and capable.
After all hasn't that been what the last 17 years were about? Wasn't my job not just to care for a child but to raise a thoughtful,loving,well rounded, capable young man? With that thought, I watched him walk through the doors of the terminal and not look back for a second. I saw a capable young man who is simply AMAZING. I saw my heart walk away with a 5' 6" body and size 12 shoe but in my head he was still that soft little boy who fit perfectly in my arms and cried when he first went to school.
Someday, I may dance with him at his wedding and I pray he will indulge this crazy old woman with a moment to relish in who he was, is and will become.