My Son

When I look at my children, I am often amazed at how quickly they are growing into young men. As was the case the night I wrote this. Although this was written almost two years ago, it still applies today. No matter how old they are, I will always see my baby boys when I look at them.


My oldest son is 16 years old and in that teenage phase of “anti-parent.” You know what I mean. He doesn’t want to sit by me anymore, he’d rather I didn’t speak to him in public, and God forbid if I were to hug him in direct view of others. But when I look at him, I still see my baby boy.
For instance, the other night he was sitting on the couch watching television. I walked into the living room and sat at the other end of the couch. Now, like any good teenager, he pointed out to me that no one was sitting on the love seat, and I could sit there. But I, like any good mother, told him I wanted to sit by him. So he rolled his eyes with an exasperated teenager’s grunt and put his feet on my lap. He then asked me to scratch his feet. While this might sound disgusting to some, keep in mind that as the mother of a teenager, I was willing to scratch his feet because this was an acceptable form of physical contact with him.
As I scratched his giant hairy man-feet, I began to flashback in my mind to when he was born. The nurse brought him to me in the hospital and my sister and I opened the cocoon of receiving blankets he was wrapped in. We began admiring this tiny person in awe. He was so beautiful. There had never been a prettier baby in the entire world, I was sure. Then we counted his tiny fingers and toes. Ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes. Oh what a precious child!
Then, my thoughts brought me back to the present. When did my beautiful baby boy grow up? Did I blink? What happened? Did his ten perfect baby toes transform into these giant hairy man-feet that were on my lap overnight? It just didn’t make any sense! These memories made me very overwhelmed with emotion and I just wanted to rock him and tell him he was my baby. However, being a somewhat reasonable woman, I knew this was not an option. So I grabbed my cell phone and I sent him a text that said, “I LOVE YOU!” He jumped to attention when his phone went off, reasonably expecting the message to be from one of his various friends. Then he opened his phone. At which point he read it, rolled his eyes, and grunted. Which in my world, I chose to interpret as, “I love you too mom.”