Another day, another tear

He sniffled all the way to the bus stop today. Yesterday, I used a marker to draw a little heart on the inside of his wrist, telling him he could look at it whenever he felt like he missed me, and today he begged for it to be re-inked, desperation in his voice. I waved and tried to make my smile even more broad as he climbed onto the bus, and then the bus driver called me over to ask whether he was usually clingy. “He cries whenever we get to school,” she said, “and says he misses you.”

Rip my heart out, why don’t you? I know this is within the realm of “normal,” but that doesn’t make it easier. Yesterday, he told me he cried “only one time!” (which Sam told me had happened on the bus), but then he spent the next couple of hours at home being a raging terror, screaming about everything. I’m not sure that’s better.

But here’s the thing: last night, after I put them to bed with a story and a kiss, I was suddenly struck with a memory I hadn’t had in a while. I recalled lying on the floor in the hallway outside their room, waiting for them to drop off to sleep so that I could sneak down the stairs. At the time, it felt like such a crazy annoyance; why couldn’t they just go to sleep without me? Surely, they were big enough? But that period is long over, so that even the memory hasn’t drifted into my head for ages. I actually felt incredibly sad for a moment, because it struck me that the period of goodnight kisses and bedtime stories, too, would become nothing more than a memory in the not-so-distant-as-I-might-hope future. They’ll crash into their beds without Mommy even being a blip on their horizons, and the freedom to spend my evenings as I wish will taste a little bittersweet, I think.

Someday – soon, probably, as such things are reckoned – Gabe will climb onto the bus without a backward glance or thought. Soon, it’ll be a friend’s car instead of a bus. And I don’t even want to think about what comes after that, in those days when even a teenager’s rolled eyes at my peck on his cheek will be a precious memory.

So when he clings to my hand and tells me that a whole day is just too long to miss me, I’ll hug him and kiss him and tell him that, yes, it’s an awfully long time. But I’m right here, and I’ll always be right here for him, and he’ll carry my heart with him, on his wrist and in his own chest.