LET MY WORDS BE FEW

I miss my son. I miss our alone times together. I miss the way we used to snuggle and give butterfly kisses at bedtime and other times and just be silly together. I miss doing homework with him. I miss making his bowl of Cheerios and putting sugar on it for him. I miss the way he used to come home from school and say, "Hey mom, will you make your Famous Chili for me". I miss the times he did crazy things to me, like "Let's go out for donuts, mom", and me the fool, believing he meant Shipley's and all the while he had other mischievous plans in store for me. I miss the day my little 8 year old boy rang the doorbell and when I opened the front door, he was holding a dead squirrel in one hand, a b.b. gun in the other and with tender tears of regret running down his face, he cried and confessed to me, "I thought killing an animal would be fun, but it wasn't"; and he let me comfort him. I even miss the "bandaide" times with my son..the times that the snips and snails and puppy dog tails would visit my world with cuts and bruises and dog bites and near overdoses on baby aspirin and putting a screwdriver into the wall socket and various hockey injuries...I miss my little son. He is all grown up and more than happily married now. He lives too far away to visit very often. Now, when I do see him on those rare and precious occasions, I am thankful for each and every nano-second. I drink up his voice and I capture his smell and I hold it all in my heart until the next precious visit comes. One of those visits will be tomorrow at our family reunion. I exhort you, drink up all these precious moments with your child, now. Store up photographs in your heart and mind for a near and coming bittersweet day when he is no longer your little boy, but he is a handsome and caring and strong man who loves the outdoors with a passion, who loves to hunt and fish and dress up in camo and lay stealth in the bushes before dawn, as still as a picture, for a cause he enjoys. He has an amazing wife he is madly in love with and who works together with him every day and plays together with him every weekend. He is a son who has inherited the joy and desire of his heart to live on a lake with a boat and a fishing pier. A son who turned out to be everything I had prayed he would be, and more than I could have imagined, which is exactly the way it should be, and I wouldn't change a thing; which is what makes the bitter sweet. But for all of this, God help me, I still miss my son.