Holding on..

Last week, my baby turned seventeen. It’s hard to wrap my head around that number.

When he was born, I was snuggling him in the hospital bed. He was swaddled up, and his curly blond hair was spun around his head like a cotton candy halo, and I was marveling at the very miracle of him (as one does), the eighth child born to a woman in her forties.

“Wait,” and the words burst out of me before I had a split second to think, “we will be sixty when he graduates from high school.” My husband looked up and said, “I have never known you to do math voluntarily.” Snarky.

Well, here we are at the year I become sixty (not for a while though), and he will be graduating, and twenty-six years of homeschooling will come to an end.

Gulp.

When he was a baby, I clung to his babiness because at the age I was at, I knew it was unlikely I would have another. I would have welcomed it, but God is wise, and I am not, and things worked out fine.

Because I felt he was last, and because I was older and had a certain level of experience, I was more relaxed than I had ever been, and I was determined to enjoy him. I didn’t mind the sleepless nights. David bought a glider, and I put it next to the bed so getting up with him was easy. I co-slept with him more than the others. I wore him in my baby wrap all the time (my back still reminds me of this), inhaling his baby smell and keeping him tight against my heart.

I find myself holding tight these days, without the wrap, of course. He is taking a once-a-week science class at a parish that’s a half-hour drive from our house. He didn’t really need the science credit, but the hour in the car once a week affords me time with him. He’s an accomplished musician, and we often listen to the radio and talk about music. I hear his opinions, he hears mine, we laugh because I have a tin ear. We discuss his classes, his ambitions, and his thoughts on life. I hold on a little in these drives. Next year, he will be in trade school working toward an ambition he’s had since he was a small boy, and I am proud of that. I want that for him, but I will miss this time. The same way I miss him being wrapped to me.

This is my way of holding tight. Next week, his older brother and I are traveling five hours away to look for his first apartment. He secured his dream job in a city that is not close. It’s a doable weekend trip, but he won’t be popping into my room in the evenings anymore to discuss his day. So I offered to take him there to help him find a good apartment. Really, it’s about the drive. It’s my way of holding on, for just a little while longer. He was my late walker. He didn’t walk until he was fifteen months old and my husband used to insist it was because I never put him down. He was my fifth baby and I was getting older (I was thirty-six) and I thought he would be my last (ha!). I was holding tight to those baby years.

I am a holder.

It’s inevitable, this leaving. It means you’ve done your job. One daughter is already gone, another has one foot out the door, and the other two won’t be here much longet if their plans work out.

If you asked them I think my kids would say I am anxious for them to go. I think they are all anxious to start their adult lives and they assume I am as well. I am, but I also want them to be able to take long drives to science classes and to pop into my room at night. I want them to join me while I eat my lunch (not breakfast, no one should speak at breakfast) and talk about whatever pops into their heads.

It’s a new stage the husband and I are looking at, and it’s a good one. We have made some travel plans and are looking toward retiring; it may be possible someday.

Change is hard, and while I have had plenty of time to prepare, his turning seventeen threw me for a little loop. That blond, halo-topped baby is over six feet tall with a voice that comes from deep within.

And yet, even in the ache of it, I know how blessed I am to have been allowed to hold so long — to rock, to drive, to listen, to walk beside these boys as they became men and these girls as they became women. Not everyone gets that gift in such abundance. The days of baby wraps and bedtime talks slip quietly into memories, but love doesn’t loosen its grip; it simply changes shape. I will always be a holder, even when my hands are empty, trusting that God who gave them to me for a season will continue to hold them far better than I ever could.