Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Baby oil and big boys
I can still smell baby oil and lotion from the first time I bathed you.

I see you standing by the sofa, arms stretched as far as they’ll go and you lunge for the chair and take your first step. You were after the soccer ball.

I feel the pain in my heart when you fell and we had to rush you to the emergency room and the elation to find out you were okay. I hear the laughing with the xray tech that shows us there’s no damage to your head, and we can see all your adult teeth buds.

I feel the joy in you your first day of ‘real’ school.

My eyes tear even now to remember the first time your dad left us to go to war and how you cried. How close we became, just the two of us battling the world and each other. You’ve always been my best buddy.

I feel the anger of you telling me you hate me when you had the operation and had to learn to walk again, and see the shock on your face when I tell you “good, now walk over here and tell me that so we can go home!”

The pain of your growing up in a foreign land that wasn’t favorable to you, the pain of seeing you off at the airport to return to the US while I stayed for 4 years.

I feel the pride I felt at your high school graduation.

I often relive the terror I felt when I found out you’d run my car under an 18-wheeler less than a year later. I remember the hidden weak-knees and sick stomach, and the determination I put forth to show a brave face when I saw you immediately after that accident. It was so hard to take you back to that car to get your stuff.

I worry every time you leave the house. You’re such a daredevil and you enjoy torturing me with it. I cry every year on your birthday and still haven’t figured out if I’m celebrating your birth, or the fact you’ve lived another year! LOL Of course, your dad thinks I’m silly, but I know he worries too.

I touch your head when you sleep and feel a tug at my heart when I see your stuffed bunny you’ve kept on your bed since the first time your dad came home from overseas.

How can you be a man when all I see is the baby I brought into this world 21 years ago?
 
posted by Terri at 6:41 AM |