This mom is not ready to let go…
He could always make my heart melt with his chocolate brown eyes. Even at age three he was a little grown-up with a huge vocabulary. People always smiled at the eloquent way the little guy spoke Afrikaans (our first language), and he wrote his first poem before he could spell. My sweet little boy, Jean, is now a man of 21 who is ready to spread his wings and fly. He graduated from college, found a great job, and is looking for his own place to stay. It’s all so wonderful! Just one problem: I’m not ready… It’s not that I don’t want him to enjoy every minute of his new and exiting journey – because I do! It’s not that I’m not grateful – because I am so grateful for the positive direction his life is taking. It’s simply a matter of me not being ready to let go… Nothing really prepares us for this, does it? I’m not ready for his little red car to no longer be parked outside my window. I’m not ready to stop falling over his shoes in the hallway. I still want to see him snuggle with his little sister Christie, huddle over a piece of artwork with Jason, and I still want to lay in bed and hear him laugh with Terrance into the early morning hours. I’m not ready to let go of the long and rich conversation we have about anything from politics to pumpkin. I’m so not ready to cook authentic South African food without my oldest chopping, stirring, and adding things to age old recipes. I really don’t want to be a mother who keeps controlling until she’s resented, but I also don’t want him to think that I stopped caring. Because the truth is that I lay awake wondering, worrying, …