Healthy but sleepy boy born on the 19th day of April, 1990 at 9.07 am

My boy is going to be a non teen in two days. How cool is that.

As I think about him and the man he's become, I feel many things.

I feel love. I feel proud. I feel relieved.

I don't feel regret. I don't feel old. I don't wish I could go back to the days he was a baby or toddler. I made it my goal to grow with him, to be able to let go just the right amounts at just the right times.

I've hauled out his baby book that isn't as loaded as you might imagine an only child's baby book might be. What is in it though are my words from different times throughout his life. An excerpt from when he was "2 3/4 years old" reads  Right now you're very close to me and miss me quite a bit when I'm gone. It won't be very many years till you won't so I'll enjoy it until then. My plan is to enjoy you now so when you start to break away it will be o.k..

So far, my plan has worked pretty well. Of course there's a gray area now but I deal with that in my regular way which is to remember what I was like at his age. At his age I was in a very different place. I was well into living on my own and supporting myself, something which I've stated elsewhere was one of my life goals. Although this difference between my son and myself at his age now is significant, there is still much that's the same. I was just as irresponsible and procrastinated as much as he does. I paid bills late and my apartments were a disaster area. When I moved out of my first apartment I had to wash the accumulation of dirty dishes in the bathtub because there were so many and once had to pay to get my phone reconnected because I'd been too lazy to go pay the bill.

So now, I temper my expectations of my son by being as realistic as possible. Yes, he's a grown man. No he's not self supporting. Yes, I was on my own working full time. No, I wasn't in university with the intent to get a degree. Yes, I partied all night, every night and had a great time going out with a bunch of different guys. No, my son is not a party animal, in fact he's a self proclaimed "nerd" (a fact as a mom I vehemently disagree with, of course) and has a girlfriend who I can very well see him being with for the rest of his life.  

Here I need to address something which my sister pointed out to me after reading one of my posts about spanking: http://campbellscoup.blogspot.com/2010/03/to-liz-wherever-you-may-be.html    

She told me I'd made it sound like he'd been raised by monks which couldn't be further from the truth. He was not raised in a bubble and was exposed to his fair share of bad influences which he somehow managed to choose not to emulate. He's had his piercings (something I didn't object to once he was 18 and have since been removed of his own accord) and is finally on the verge of acquiring his long awaited tattoo, a reproduction of one of my brother's tattoos that holds deep meaning for my son. It will be interesting to see how that goes because one thing's for sure, my boy is not good with pain!

Anyway, for now, even though my boy is grown, I'm still mom and still thinking and figuring out how to do things right. How to not be too intrusive yet still have expectations, how to support without enabling, how to balance friendship and respect in my role as a parent to an adult. Wow, what a thing that is to write out loud.