A Tale of True Love

As I walked down the hall yearning to be back in my warm, comfy cocoon comprised of blankets and my husbands soft belly, I heard a sad sniffle in the darkness. And another. And then I heard a stifled, staccato whimper.

I stepped into my oldest sons room to find him on the floor, crying. My older child has always been a softie at heart, like his mother; a diamond in the rough. Formed by the harshness of our experiences with the outside world, a once open and vibrant heart is molded into a tough, crystalline shell, an attempt at protecting our big, vulnerable hearts from the evils of the world. Immediately I felt for him, but I was also exhausted. Every night he’d been awake crying before bed and every night I spent several minutes expending a lot of emotional energy answering life’s toughest questions. Tonight, I was almost out of gas.

At first I tried to get him into bed and reassure him that his feelings were valid but rumination isn’t good for anyone and maybe we could put it away for now and readdress it in the morning. He agreed and I left the room, only to hear him two minutes later sniffling once again. This time I knew that nothing less than an entire child’s sermon was going to satisfy the satiety of his sadness. I took a deep breath and stepped in, ready to talk him off the ledge of anxious overthought.

Beginning as it always does, we started with his thoughts chasing each other in circles. He’s never really clear on the cause right away, but he’s certain of the feelings; sadness, overwhelming and deep sadness. It’s always during these conversations that I am reminded that he’s as emotionally adept as he is. Feeling everything can feel like a monumental burden. Feeling deeply means that we love deeply, we admire loyalty, we live authentically, and we have trouble letting go. I explain this to my son who is expressing that he misses all of his old friends from previous schools, as we have spent a lot of his life moving around to various places. The conversation centered around friends, the importance of friends, and how friends are here for different seasons of our lives - some stay for a very long time, some for less. Yet, that doesn’t make the impact of any friend we knew for a short time any less meaningful. Through his sobs he responds.

“It doesn’t mean I stop caring just because I don’t see them anymore. Each one of them is still a person and still unique. I miss them.”

Though I never implied we should dehumanize these friends who no longer live in our lives, I was proud that he wouldn’t let me forget that these people were, indeed, people with feelings too. It begins to dawn on me that my sweet boy misses connection. Covid and the abuse he suffered at the tender age of seven at the last public school he ever went to left him feeling marginalized, unlovable, and lonely. Finally, last year he reconnected to the world, making friends in a safe school environment for the first time. Not only did he see these children as friends and peers, he sincerely values others as completely beautiful, unique individuals. Each time he speaks about his friends, his feelings, and his joy, my heart bursts. He pondered if maybe the friends he made last year didn’t care about him as much as he does them, or even worse - that maybe they had forgotten about him or that he had forgotten some of them. He became distraught at the thought. I reassured him that his friends still care and so does he, and we discussed the beauty of just having the privilege of meeting them and walking the journey of life together on this earth. Still sad, he relented to my explanation. I asked him why he still had tears streaming down his cheek.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m trying to keep it from happening again.”

I ask him to clarify. He can’t. I ask questions.

“You mean you would like to keep from losing friends again?”

“Yes,” he says, in between big snorts.

“Is it hard to move a lot?” I ask.

“Yes. I always miss my friends because we never keep in touch with them,” he answers as he begins to cry again.

It’s in this moment that I realize my baby needs stability. I knew that one day it would come, that one day I’d have to figure out my shit and put down some roots, but I thought I’d have a few more years to make sure I was making the right decision. It’s clear my time is up.

“I promise you, that no matter what happens this year, I will make sure we keep in touch with the friends you make. Does that help you feel better?”

“Yes,” he says through the first tears of relief I’ve seen all night. The fluttering in my heart begins to slow, as does my breathing and I begin to relax a little. I continue to reassure him that everything will be alright and that we will figure it all out together.

“I just want you to know mommy, I wanted to tell you that I love you so much - and I will always love you. And I will never forget you.”

All of the breath in my lungs left my body and I choked as I starred into my baby’s eyes. Hot tears spilled from my eyes down my cheeks to my lips and I smiled. In that moment, I’d never felt more loved, nor had I felt more overwhelming love toward someone else. It’s one thing to have children, to love them as babies and guide them along the path, but it’s another thing to grow alongside them as a human being, leaning into the lessons of life we are all still learning. The layers of love keep peeling away only to reveal endless discoveries of truer and truer depths of love.

“I feel exactly the same way about you, baby. You are mommy’s entire life. You and your brother are everything to me and I’ll love you forever, beyond forever. You are a beautiful human, one of the best I’ve ever known. You’re a good boy and you make good choices. I love you. You’re perfect just the way you are now, and I love you even when you make not so good choices. I’ll always love you.”

As he absorbed my words, I climbed into bed next to him for a few minutes as we continued to talk. Feeling his hair brush between my fingers as I stroked his forehead reminded me of when he was a small boy and I would stroke his hair as he’d fall asleep on my lap. The moment was bittersweet, spending time so close to my sweet son who clearly doesn’t need me as much as he once did. As a parent, independence rings as success, and yet something about it causes my heart to ache. He’s growing up. He has an entire life, an entire world outside of me and I’ve been waiting for this moment for his whole life in excited anticipation. Now that it has arrived I find that my tears haven’t stopped streaming. The love and warmth and ferocious protective instinct fill me up, even as I realize more and more that he will need it less and less as time goes on and I must recognize it as a good thing, and I do. Unendingly proud is an understatement of how I feel about this boy and the strides he’s made with the obstacles he’s faced. I so admire his ability to overcome adversity and embrace life so lovingly again and again. Sometimes I wonder how I was chosen to be blessed as this extraordinary child’s mother. Not that it matters, but I want it known to the universe that I am eternally grateful.

As our life talk came to a close, I kissed my not-such-a-baby boy on the cheek and stood up from the bed.

“Everything will be okay,” I say.

“Everything will be okay,” he repeats.

“I love you, baby.”

“I love you mommy.”

We say it a few more times because he will never let me say ‘I love you’ without saying it back to me in return. I smile at him as he begins to bury his head into his pillow as a last reassurance that all is well. I don’t want to leave the room; I want to watch him as he falls asleep, ensure that his tears dry and his dreams are joyful. I want to stay and daydream about the boy he was, the boy he is, and the boy he will become as we continue our life journey together. Yet, secretly I know that it’s time to go, that this emotional growth in my child is exactly what he needs. My heart feels as though it is tethered to his, enchanted in a way that is absolutely unbreakable. Against the wishes of my heart, my feet begin to shuffle forward as my eyes begin to leak again. The heart aches at the baby he was, the boy he is, and the man he shall become, only because it knows that all that time, the time of his evolution between conception and my death is not enough, not enough time to know him and to love him. Forever is simply never enough when it comes to true love.