Everyone said the hardest time would be seeing them off to college....well it seemed hard when I left my eldest son at college 3 yrs ago....but there were calls, many more then now, and texts, many more then now, and holidays and visits...many more then now.

 My eldest is 20, and in love...and I like her.  They are good for and to each other, everything a mother could want for her son....so why is my heart breaking at times?  Is it just that the Holiday break lasted 3 days instead of 2 weeks?  After all he has no job to get back to.  Is it because he he didn't come for Thanksgiving, or is looking at staying on campus for the summer to be near her instead of coming home to stay for a couple of months...is it just that I miss him?

 I am probably giving folks the impression that I am or was a smothering mother who wants to be in his business all the time, but that really isn't the case.  I went out of the way to foster independence in my sons, they cook, they clean, and they can do their own laundry, they can handle money and they know how to delay gratification and save for things they want instead of using credit.  I am PROUD of how mature, kind and gentle he has turned out.  But I suppose I imagined I'd be first in his heart like I was when he was 4 and he learned that Valentine's Day was about giving the person you love a card with a heart on it so he gave me a 5 of hearts from a card deck he found.  I carry that card in my wallet. 

Everyone told me his leaving home was what would break my heart....but they were wrong...what breaks my heart is becoming less needed by my children.  I feel foolish for the sadness this brings out in me...it is the nature of things...like death and taxes...it is just how things are. 

Our children move on, they find love, they make their own families who then become the centers of their worlds and we parents, eventually, if we did things right, become loving satellites, watching from further and further away, still loved by our kids, but people they visit now because "home" has become somewhere else.

I know my son loves me, I know he does, without a doubt.  But I'm sadly learning that a child's love changes texture, their love evolves into something new to accomodate all the new people who enter their lives while parents are doomed to love their kids just as strongly as they did the moment they were born and they must try to move forward with this raw place where that evolution rubs like a pressure sore.

Sorry....trying to smile thru it.  Could also be a result of my Lexapro RX running out this week too!  LOL