This photo, resurrected by my SIL for a throw back Thursday this spring, was taken before my youngest son was diagnosed with a brain tumor. In so many ways that ended childhood as we knew it in our family. The reality is that severe trauma changes you forever, and so while chemotherapy and radiation ended, hair grew back, and on the surface our routine returned to what it had been, in truth we could never really go all the way back to the way we all felt this day.
This Mother's Day, many many years later, I am reflecting on the fact that my offspring are no longer children. They are men, all of them having left or about to leave their teenage years behind. They are all in the process of embarking on lives that are independent of the people we were then. It is a remarkable job, parenthood. There is no other human relationship quite like it, and I am eternally grateful to my husband for bestowing it upon me. I would never have applied for the job if left to my own devices. When I was a girl no older than my youngest is here I was quite clear that marriage and parenthood were definitely not on my 'to do' list, and I held that view well into my 20's. Today I am once again grateful for the riches that raising children to manhood have left me with.
No comments:
Post a Comment