A Mother's Love For Her Son or The Future

Love is the power we seek most in this world but it is like a swift little bird that flies just out of reach every time we get near enough to it. Some of us are lucky, we catch hold of it, keep it near to us, safe, precious, beautiful thing that it is...we know it's fragile. It must be nurtured with the softest of touch...and yet, even with that one perfect thing in our grasp, we look for more of it. Try hard to hoard as much of it as we can manage to find. It's when love shifts, moves, grows that we falter in our steps...wonder at the meaning in our world. Army Son left today and took so much love with him to Iraq. His mother, one of my Heart Sisters, is left here wondering what will happen to him and trying to live in the day she's in.

It makes me think of my own son, 14, strong, beautiful, brave and wise beyond his years...what will he do? Where will his life take him and how far away from me? None of us know what the future will bring...it's another of those elusive beasts, always out of our grasp. I try hard not to think too much on it because it is a dangerous beast...not bright and beautiful like Love, but dark and forbidding in my mind. I've had too many years of battling with it and my scars number beyond count. Every once in a while, I just can't seem to help myself and I pick up that sword and step back out on the field of battle once again.

I have so much hope for his future...of all the things he COULD be...I see such greatness in this not so little boy. He stands taller than me now and stares back at me with my own eyes set in a face so much like his father's and yet, so very much his own. It seems like yesterday that he was my 3 year old, crawling in my lap to hug and snuggle me during his favorite cartoon...now he comes to me while we watch dramas on tv, hugs and snuggles me when I cry at something too painful for my heart to watch. He's got my heart, too, but it's balanced by his dad's pragmatism (thank God). He is my Boogie Monster who still enjoys hiding and then jumping out at me from some strange corner that I never know how he fit into, but he is also a young man who knows far more than he lets on about the world around him. I wonder at how he will get to the places he wants to go in life, but I find that I don't worry quite as often about the bad that could come...something tells me that he's going to blow us away by whatever he does do.

Little boy

Strong and wild

Such a daring, willful child

You grew in me

But now stand tall

Above my head

I feel so small

I love you, Son

Your laugh

Your smile

You make life so worthwhile.

--All Ducked Up

June 2, 2011