Cherish the Moments

 

Was able to take a few hours of leave this morning to see two of our boys start a new year of school.  Running a bit late, our middle son, twelve, ran hurriedly to catch up to his friends, already starting their walk toward a new, 7th grade year.  Shoot!  I didn’t get a chance to hug him one last time, to wish him good luck.  Feeling like I missed the moments pass all too quickly, a bit later I watched carefully our oldest walk away from the house on his way to the bus stop for his first day of high school.  I suddenly found myself tearing up.  Words can’t begin to describe the overwhelming feelings pouring through me at that moment.  Fourteen years of age and taller than me now, yet as I watched him walk the path he had walked for nine previous years, suddenly in an instant he was only five once again, so tiny, so anxious, and so fearful.  And yet today he and his brother left as confident as ever, so independent.  An overpowering realization was upon me that nearly a decade had flown by all too quickly.  How much did I miss our boys lives?  How often was I not present with them?  All past now, as memories flooded in of the time when they were both five, the age of our 3rd child now.  ‘Clinging’, almost desperately to the past, to that all too precious time with my boys, now gone forever, so much of which I know I foolishly squandered.  ‘Clinging’ to memories that I know will fade more and more with each passing year.  So little time left with them.  When must Kim and I, and how can we, ‘Let Go’ when they one day become young men and leave our home?  How will we be when they finally leave?  I know I will be a basket case for sure, but I know their leaving is how it must be.  As my father did with me when we both reluctantly ’Let Go’, we will one day have to do the same with one another, for time is at last all too short.  We are so very proud of who they are, so proud of everything about them.  They are only the best parts of Kim and me.  We love them beyond measure and so one day we know, we will have to let them all go.