Time is False

I feel oddly jealous of both of my sons, due to their ages, all in front of them that's already behind me, choices, excitement, learning, the rushes of Being Young! If I could somehow really communicate to them how much I want them to BE IN THESE MOMENTS -- because suddenly I blinked, and I'm almost 50, and it starts to feel like all the doors are either familiar or closed, or I already went through them, and it's so HARD, ever, to be surprised or thrilled in those ways specific to their ages. But I didn't know it until I was already beyond it & none of that can happen for or to me again, not that way, where everything feels like a FIRST still, and not a recurrence that my mind, without asking, runs through all its experience filters & dilutes, categorizes, analyzes, shifts, hones, until it's just another piece of information that I file in my mental library, like a footnote to the Big Main Event that already happened years ago.

A photo I saw today, a movie still of Javier Bardem and an actress in the throes of unbridled hubba-hubba? Recalled for me the depth of my old impetuousness, the once-upon-a-time imperviousness to consequence; it was NOW-THIS-SECOND that held all my attention -- & I don't mean just in relation to unbridled hubba-hubba -- I'm talking unbridled life. I do hate that I'll never 'have' Javier Bardem. I hate more that all those blasts of firsts are mainly over for me. I hate that I have a mental library because sometimes I don't want the extra awareness or checks or balances; I simply want FEELING!

My male children are there where urgency & immediacy are the crossroads under their feet, and no one can conceive of the words to tell them it all may turn out differently than what now is showing them, than what they 'know' in their beginning place. I want them to be ravenous, insatiable, TO TAKE BIG BITES, like wolves, to digest it all in raw juicy chunks & not think about regurgitation, examination, until later.

But the Mom in me? Eesh. She frets, she wants to pave the way, steer, point everything out, direct, warn, protect, counsel, caution, advise. All of that is a distraction from their journey. They have mistakes to make, their own stones to roll, their own doors to open and/or close. I can't do it for them. Or, really, with them. I have to recede, watch in anxious silence, unless they're threatening themselves with stupidity. I have to balance where I am and what I know with distance from where they are and what they are learning, are meant to learn. My lessons suited me. They have other lessons to learn. I can guess at some, knowing them as I do. I can listen, I can stay at the ready for when they seek & ask, want to talk, want to deliberate, evaluate. I'm not less but differently needed.

My life, lived as a woman, puts me already at a remove from them; but it also makes me a Pandora's Box of ideas & insights when it comes to the women who enter their lives. They've both already tapped into my willingness to talk about any subject, bluntly, openly, to say what I feel but to allow them to have their own sensations & responses, and to draw different conclusions. They both know, I think, that I want them to be who THEY are, not who I am. Or was. They are my sons for the rest of my life. They are themselves for the rest of theirs, and being my sons is only one aspect of those selves. ACCEPT. ACCEPT. Give what I have an abundance of: LOVE! Say it, say I'm proud, say I'm excited, happy, confused, concerned, whatever is appropriate and real to what they're doing as separate individuals. And take the hits when they begin to analyze me as a parent. Say, "Yes, I screwed that up" or "Yes, I did a good job there." Own all that, without owning them.

Kevin is 18. EIGHTEEN. David will be 22. These are not children, anymore. But they are MY children, always. I'm learning how to play that, but they give me help. They show or tell me, mostly INdirectly now, but then they're both in the throes of separating themselves from me as a parent, a ruling entity, an influence. They have to dismiss me in order to establish their own footing. I have to let myself be dismissed gracefully & graciously, without allowing them to put me in absentia. I AIN'T gonna go away.