Son

You know those super awesome quotes superimposed onto stock photos people post on Facebook everyday?  I love them.  And I am not saying that in a super sarcastic way.  Because they are super.  Uplifting spiritual guidance in jpeg form. Rocking.  This one was 'shared' 1255 times, it so prophetic and speaks to me right here in this exact moment when I am idly wasting time on this interweb.

I saw this one superimposed picture/quote today about how you are 'his first love and his first kiss and his first friend and he calls you 'mom.' That's really nice in a creepy kind of Oedipus-complex kind of way.
I have a son and as much as I love him I will never think that I am owed his first kiss or his first love.

Weirdly now we are in that stage where we have to find this new way to love each other.  Because kissing and cuddling are not the ways of the world.  Hugging is okay in a private-in the-house-don't-let-my-friends-see-you-do-it-kind of way.  Saying 'I love you' happens long before we enter the school drop-off zone.  Because mushy mommy love is "EMBARRASSING."

I do other things now.  I still hug and kiss, a lot less, but I make it work. We play baseball and yell insulting comments to each other.  He tells me I throw like a girl and I tell him he throws like a diarrhea grandpa.  Because diarrhea is always funny.  And isn't cool to have a mom that lets you say diarrhea in a completely non-medical kind of way?  And he tells me I'm funny.  And so bad I want to tell him 'I love you too.' But that's too mushy you know.  So I just tell him he's funnier than dada's fart on a vinyl seat. 

I am trusting him more.  I let him stay home while I run to the store to get that one thing.  Because what says love more than allowing your kid to stay home while you have many anxiety attacks in the less than a mile trip to the store??
I keep reminding myself that I was home by myself at that age.  South side of Chicago.  Rule: No one in, no one out.  Don't answer the phone unless it's mom calling, leaving a message on our brand new cassette activated answering machine.  And there wasn't cell phones.  Or there was cell phones but you had to carry them in a pack and they weighed more than a small baby.
I was home alone without the nifty technological advances we are blessed with today and I lived!

 I let him stay home.  I run as quick as I can to the store.  Moving hell and high water.  Tripping babies in my way to get that one thing so I can quickly make it home to the son I love.
Sometimes, every once in awhile,  he will call me on the cellphone and asks when I will be back from my quick run.  And I so bad want to say 'I love you too son.'
And sometimes I do.