Sweetness follows
My boy turns 16 today. As in years. Sixteen years old. Today. I have a sixteen year old. Me. I have a sixteen year old son.
Being a parent is such a strange thing. I am full of memories. They drown me every day. There’s just so many moments. so many remembered. so many forgotten. It’s always hard, but it’s easier when they’re younger. everything comes at you so fast, everything is new, everything is a first. you live at the speed of light. No time to think.
But then they get older. They get older and you get older. everything slows. you can finally see now. you are a bridge between what was and what will be.
it’s lonely being a parent. Lonely being the curator of all these memories. Always. Always. It’s in the pictures. the turn of a wrist. In a smile. A smell. In the light of a slow afternoon.
One day he’s driving this tiny toy car and you think it will last forever. But you blink. and now it’s the day where you get to give him his first real car. and you realize… his memories are separating from yours. They have been for awhile of course, but on this day, it feels even more pronounced.
You put the keys in his hands, hands that are now bigger than yours, how is that possible how could your sweet little baby ever be bigger than you.
Yet here we are.
It is a lonely thing we do. Saying hello and saying goodbye, in every breath, every blink, every step.