They Leave the Nest Eventually...

You think the day will never come when they are toddling around, drooling on stuff and clearing off coffee tables. You envision a day when no one will mess up your house, a baby swing will not take prominence over art in the family room and baby bottles will not fill the top rack of the dishwasher.

When the teen years hit, you wonder about a life spent devoted to this person who no longer thinks you are cool. Who likes his friends better and finds them smarter....and funnier.

You know I usually stick to the funny but the first weekend in May had me looking hard to find anything funny at all.

Backstory: the oldest, who has just completed first year in college (he lived away but came home weekends - less and less as the year went on) signed himself on to the army after graduation. The good side? The army will be paying for college from now on. The bad? My baby may get himself killed somewhere, someday. I guess we all run that risk though on a daily basis.

C decided his junior year in high school that this was going to be the life for him. He wanted to enlist. His dad and I talked him into going to college first. "Go in as an officer so you can boss people around!" You know, I am all about the bossing people around so that was my advice. We told him not to sign up for anything the first year, that we would gladly pay for college. He waited and now as a sophomore he is no longer mine. He literally belongs to the U.S. Army. Part of what he now wanted to do was attend basic training. He could have gone to Officer Basic but NO, he wanted to do what the men underneath him had to do. So, the army was picking him up on Monday to go to Ft. Benning, Georgia and attend infantry basic. He could not take his cell phone, laptop, ipod or anything. I will not see him ALL summer long. His brothers will not get to have him give them purple nurples all summer long. I won't get to see his long body draped over the sofa, punching a remote all summer long.

We spent our last weekend alone. Just the two of us. Everyone else in the family had something that weekend (church retreat, cub scout camp out) so C and I spent two days together. We went to the movies and we went out to eat and most of all, we talked. We also hugged each other a lot. My hugs were a desperate attempt to imprint him on me again. Just like when he was a baby and I held him all the time. I cried a lot.

You would think that when he left for college I would have felt more of this. But he still felt like he was my boy then. He no longer feels like my boy. He doesn't even look like a little boy anymore. He went to college, began doing army p.t. (physical training) every day and lost 20 pounds. He is definately a man, and a man in charge of his own destiny.

This is a pic of us on the day he left. Doesn't my hair look amazing?? Low humidity that day.

C and I kind of grew up together. I had him when I was just barely 22. I didn't even like kids all that much until he came along. I thought he was the most awesome and amazing thing in the whole world! He was always funny and smart. Never threw temper tantrums or anything stupid like that. He was a cool little kid and he grew up to be a cool adult.

C is a son to be proud of and we are. He is such a good person and so patriotic. I don't know where he gets that. We don't even own a flag.

Oh, wait there's more! Tune in when I tell you how his biological sperm donor (BSD) made contact the Friday before C left. How did he find him and make an end run around me? Myspace. I hate Myspace. It is the devil. Add that to an already emotional weekend. More on that later.