Linger a Little Longer

My baby just came into my bedroom and tossed two little white socks up on my bed at me.

"Too small," he said, then turned and left.

It felt as if the socks were not little and fluffy, but heavy as cast-iron and had landed on my heart.

It's not that this particular pair of socks means a lot to me, although it's clear that their usefulness in my family is over. He'll never wear them again.

I was only still in bed because I had to finish reading, The Help, an important book about the vital need for and terrible risks of change, before I could function again. I knew what was next--the long run for the week that I'd been putting off all morning. And then, finishing writing my own important book, which I'd been putting off even longer, before it's too late for me.

I picked up the little socks and folded them back together again into a tucked-over roll, the way my mother showed me how to fold socks when I was his age. I squeezed them a little in my hand. Lovingly.

Inexplicably, I felt like he had given me a gift.

Not a pair of socks no one will ever wear again.

His own growth.

Every day of my life, I feel like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon. Life stretches and pulls on me, forcing me out of my comfort zone before I'm ready. The old stuff pulling off hurts the new skin underneath.

But what does anything ever mean if it stays the same? Though I wish each moment could linger a little longer than it does.

Right now, half of my baby's brothers have already grown up and left the home. I have pictures, but they only capture seconds in time. His other brothers are away, with their father. They'll come back today. I expect.

At work, they keep throwing my department into the blender to see what else they can chop and mix up. I've had more supervisors in the past while than I've had in ten years before. Someone up above me in the department thrives on change. I think they're playing paper dolls with us and can't wait to see what we look like in the yellow outfit.

They tell us about the new changes planned and wait for us to thank them.

I think, "What will this mean to my family? Will I still see my friends? Will I get fatter if I can't work out on the new schedule like I can now?"

And then we all adjust to it and move on.

My baby is not really a baby anymore. He's been reading for almost two years. He counts everything on one hand, having learned a system for keeping the ten's place without involving his toes.

I want to believe the best part of his day--as it is the best part of mine--is when I gather him up onto my lap before he gets in his little bed and hold him, rock him, and sing to him. He wants to hear the babyish song I made up at his age for my mother to sing to me. He wants to hear an old favorite nursery rhyme that everyone knows so well they are sick of it. And he wants to hear a wrenching song about the crucifixion.

I sing the last song, at his demand, feeling guilty all the while that I've exposed his mind to this truth, that I've exposed his body to pain by bringing it into the world, that the love for him bursting out of my heart every time I look at or think of his angel face can't keep him safe from truth or pain.

And if that group of songs isn't life all rolled up into one, I don't know what is.

He reaches his little arm up around my neck, snuggles down into my softness, sighing out whatever stress has been in his day. For one moment, we are again connected, mother and child. I keep rocking after the songs are finished, hoping he will just stay that way with me a little longer, but he knows what is next in the routine and slips off my lap to accomplish it.

Like every other child, he knows his job is to grow up.

And I know my most heartbreaking job is to let him.

But I smile to myself. Because he is still here. Growing. That is my gift.