My son is going to leave me. He's going to grow up and graduate and leave me. Just like he's supposed to do. My "Little G-man" who now towers over me and talks in a deep and resonant mans voice is quickly becoming an adult. He's not my "Little G-man" anymore... he's my grown, handsome, brilliant, amazing son who is very soon going to go out into the world and find his way, his own way, with me supporting him and loving him and always there for him... but from a distance. OMG. I don't know how I'm going to do this.
I have six children and I love each and every one of them in a special way for who THEY are, because they truly are six amazingly unique individuals. They are all their own person and while they share many traits they are unique. I have a special love for all of them. G-man is my first born. He is a part of my soul in an indescribable way. He is a part of me. Mimi is my oldest daughter. Independent and artistic from the get go. She has always forged her own way and found her own direction without caring what the rest of the world would think. Tinesy is my brilliant, thoughtful, and deep child. She see's everything. She never misses a beat. She is clever and has a keen eyes and a deep understanding beyond her years. Biggle is my sensitive jokester. He almost always has a smile on his face that makes the twinkle in his eyes even more spectacular. He's also clever but in a different way. He's funny and laughs easily, but he also cries easily and things touch him down to his soul. Boo is so young and still developmentally behind but he is all love. He is the purest form of love on this earth. He loves and accepts others with wild abandon. Then there is the Kitten, she really is very little still. Still she is her own person. She has definite opinions and a very high one of herself, as she should. She will never let anything stand in her way. She is going to be a force of nature as she gets older, she already is in her very three-year-old way.
So, yes, they are all special and amazing. My G-man though, he's.... I don't know... I don't love him more but I feel more a part of him in many ways than I do the other "older children." It seems to me that when you have a baby you feel this unreal and overpowering connection to them. They NEED you desperately... so desperately. When you hold your newborn, for me anyway, I still feel that connection with them like they are part of me. My soul is still touching theirs. I feed them from my body and take care of their every need and there is a connection like nothing else you can ever experience in this lifetime. As they grow that gradually changes, as it should. They become bigger and more independent. They still need you desperately but there is a shift. They are not part of you anymore, they are themselves. As kids grow into their teen yeas this process continues along the way. You still love them more than life itself but that basal, maybe even primal, physical connection changes... it HAS to or you would never be able to let them go. You would still jump in front of a run-away train to protect them of course but it's not that bond of infancy where your body aches for them. I think this is the way it's supposed to be. I think so anyway. Maybe I'm just crazy. The thing is that with the G-man that connection has, of course, changed. He's seventeen. He's NOT a baby or even a boy. He's a young man. Still though... I feel like with him I have some gossamer strands of that physical bond with him. He's 17, he's at least 5" taller than I am.... and just last night when The Man got up off the couch from sitting next to me to go do something my G-man leaped off his chair and dove into the spot just vacated by his Dad. I smiled as the cushions still bounced from his arrival and reached out and he held my hand. That young man still thinks that I know all things and that the sun rises and sets because I wish it to be so. I don't know what I have done to garner such complete adoration from this amazing guy, but it's there. There's something between us, some kind of connection that is unusual I think.
I think of him leaving and I swear if I allow myself to dwell on it it feels like my heart my just stop beating in my chest once he goes. How can my heart go on when it will feel like a part of it, a big part, is missing? I know it's not like he's gone, he's not dead, he'll be hours away by car most likely. I'll be able to talk to him and text him and see him now and then. I just can't imagine it.
Something I always say as a joke, but is the gospel truth, is that the thought of G-man leaving gives me a pain in my heart so awful I wonder how I will go on. The thought of the Kitten growing up and leaving for college fills me with excitement.... that I will have MY man back and not have to share him, that I will have MY life back to do with as I please instead of what pleases them, that I will find that old freedom of youth that I sometimes still miss. It sounds heartless maybe but it's true. I don't know how I will live without seeing my G-man every day. I know when the time comes, a very long time from now, I will likely feel the same about my teenaged Kitten. The thing is that I will have The Man waiting for me to be his full time lover again. We will get those days of sleeping late and making love and watching Remington Steele just to go back to bed to nap and make love again. There is that.
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