Twenty-nine years ago, this little cutie patootie came into the world. This is one of my favorite photos of him as a child. Now, he’s a full-grown man who tends to sport a mustache and sometimes a beard and who has large muscles from all his years in the weight room, but when I look at him, I still see this little boy.
He was actually due on the 3rd, and that’s when I went into labor, but he stubbornly refused to drop, so after 26 hours of labor, he was delivered via c-section because the doctor was worried about me by then. That stubbornness has been a lifelong trait of his and one that has sometimes been adorable and other times been downright infuriating, but it’s a part of who he is, and I love him, warts and all.
Prior to his birth, I worried that I wouldn’t be a good mom because I’m not very fond of small children, but the second I held him, the hibernating mama bear in me woke up and never went back to her cave. There’s an intensity and depth that exists in the love a mother has for her child that doesn’t exist in other types of love I believe it’s an innate thing that surfaces once we become mothers and serves as a layer of protection and a buffer between our children and the cruel world that surrounds them.
While I struggled a little to mother him and then my daughter when they were children, the true struggle began when he left home for college and then went into the world on his own — and then my daughter did the same. All that intensity and protective ferociousness is still here in me, but now he doesn’t need it, and neither does my daughter, at least not the way they used to need it — it’s a hard adjustment, one that is taking much longer than the adjustment I had to make when he was born.
I think a lot of that is because it’s only this last year and a half that I’ve finally started living my life for me instead of in a role in relation to someone else — someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, someone’s wife, someone’s teacher, someone’s mom, etc. While I still am his mother and my daughter’s mother, and I’m still my parents’ daughter and my brother’s sister and my boyfriend’s girlfriend, I don’t live every hour of every day doing specific things in those roles. I write, I paint, I read, I speak and present at events, I walk and swim, I ride my motorcycle, I travel, and I do other things that pertain only to who I am as an individual.
I love it, but I miss having my kids here. I miss those years, that pass by far too quickly, when they needed me.
I love my solitude for writing, but I miss the noise and presence of my kids.
I love to paint, but I miss the days of them bringing home their artwork from school for me to hang it on the walls of the stairway.
I love to read, but I miss the nightly bedtime ritual of reading to them, and I refuse to part with all the books I used to read to them — maybe there will be grandchildren someday who will enjoy having me read to them.
I love speaking to book clubs and at libraries and other literary events, but I miss coaching and watching my kids give speeches on the speech team and performing on the one-act team and in the school plays that I directed.
I love to go for long walks, but I miss doing those walks with my daughter, and I miss watching my son play basketball in the driveway and then on the playing court at school.
I love swimming, but I miss taking my kids to the pool in the summertime and teaching them to swim. I had to force my son to go down the small slide and even to jump off the low board, but once he knew he could do it, his confidence bloomed and there was no holding him back. My daughter went to Holbox Island, Mexico, twice with me to swim with whale sharks — two of the greatest moments of my life.
I love riding my motorcycle, but I miss riding bikes with my kids.
I love to travel, but I miss traveling with my kids. Sam has been my main travel partner for many years, and I think there will still be a few more trips with her down the road, I hope, but they won’t be as often as they once were. Trevor went with me to Mexico once, and we still talk about the tarantula he had to kill for Silvia while we were there, and he has great memories of our trip to New York City — in the photo, he’s on the observation deck of the Empire State Building.
Simply put, I miss my kids. I know that makes me the same as every mother out there who loves her kids and then has to figure out how to live her day-to-day life after they leave the home.
Maybe if they hadn’t been such wonderful children, I wouldn’t miss them so much. Ha ha.
I’m very proud of them both and of the job I did in raising them, despite some of the things I had to endure to do so. They are each pursuing their passions, and that makes me so happy. Trevor has always loved sports and especially basketball, and he is now a K-12 P.E. teacher and three-sport coach — basketball, though, is his baby, so he loves this time of year because that sport will soon be starting. Sam is almost done with her master’s in paleontology and is, as I write this, currently in Toronto presenting a poster she made about her thesis at the international conference of the vertebrate paleontological society.
Twenty-nine years ago today, my journey into motherhood began. I love to travel, but this has been my favorite journey. I’ve been told that being a grandmother is even better than being a mother, but I’m in no hurry to find out.
The following is a poem I wrote years ago about Trevor playing basketball in the driveway. I can still hear him yelling for me to come outside and watch him. I now get to watch him as a coach (in person and even on TV), which is great, but those years of driveway NBA were wonderful.
I included this poem in my collection of “State of Georgia . . . and Other Writings” as well as a poem about my daughter
.
Driveway NBA
Dribble, dribble, fake a move,
Shift and run -- dribbling still
-- sudden stop, feet planted.
One fluid motion of arms, hands
And ball rushing upward.
Release, follow through,
Perfect arc.
Silence . . . . . . . . .
Swish!
“Oh, yeah!”
A celebratory jerk backward
Of fist and elbow, waist high.
The crowd of one -- mom on the porch
-- cheers enthusiastically, knowing
That no pro game her son dreams
Of playing in can ever match
This one on the driveway.
As fate would have it, I finished all the editing on my fifth book, “Trouble on Tybee,” today, on my son’s birthday. I have a lot going on next week, but after that, I will make the cover and complete everything else that goes into preparing the book for publication. Once I’ve released it, I will share a bit more of it here with you, so if you’re not yet a paying subscriber, become one, so you can see that.
Happy birthday to my son.
Until next time.
Tammy Marshall