I look up to him and know that this will be our new place in life. He will always be looking down at me, no matter how much I do for him.
I thought when he was little that was just the right size all my insecurities could manage. I wasn’t prepared to handle raising a boy, the pressure in making sure that he was the type of man that women feel safe around or the type of man who treated the underdog with dignity.
At the time, the space where he lived in my stomach was empty and now filled with worry. As he is now taller than me I am still filled worry, but he is filled with a future made of plans of passport stamps and arguing for justice sake.
He looks up into the clouds and sees a storm coming,
“ Mom, “I think that’s lightening.” To honor his presence I want to tell him that he was my lightening, but his youthfulness makes me hesitate. He was the one who came into my world and struck the foolish young girl out of me. He was the one who created a perfect storm that would sift out the trash from my soul and force me to feel this life.
The strength and confidence he walks with in each stride reminds me of the young woman I once was. I gladly sacrificed her to Zeus for him, and would do it again to see the young man I see.
There is a point in time when he became separate from me. I think it was during his first Halloween when he knew he could be anything he wanted to be. The polyester costumes keep changing for him, as mine slowly changes from savior to friend, I can only imagine which costume he prefers.
When will he realize that me and his dad were never the main characters? I dare not say when he has his own children because that will be a day when he sees the lightning strike the child he thought he’d never grow out of.
