Being a Mom is a life of contradictions
I am sitting on my porch enjoying my coffee this morning but something doesn’t feel right. It hasn’t felt right all summer but it is a feeling I’m gonna have to get used to. A feeling that I’m facing kicking and screaming. There is someone missing in my home.
My class of 2025 senior is off living his best life this summer. He is at summer camp…a camp he has been attending since he was in preschool, Camp Albemarle. This camp located in Newport, NC has been my child’s happy place for as long as he can remember and this summer has not been any different. Except this summer he got the opportunity to be a counselor, meaning he has been gone all summer long. I can’t blame him for loving it so much. You can just feel the peace overwhelm you driving up…cabins dotting the field that overlooks the sound, the breeze from the water, a singular wooden cross providing a space to worship. It is magical. He has always come back from camp a different human…rested yet exhausted, calm yet excited, renewed yet assured.
He is an introverted person who craves and needs his alone time so it has always puzzled my husband and I that he has done so well there. In years past I would wake up and use the password given to me at drop off to scour the photos from the day prior for any glimpse of him. My child has a gift of eluding the photographer to the point I question if he is even there and when photos were taken, he wouldn’t crack a smile. I’d spend the week convinced he was miserable and missing us terribly just to pick him up and him telling me it was the best week of his life. My child is his happiest when he is at camp.
He was supposed to come home Friday. Football is kicking off, we have senior photos scheduled, and of course there are those pesky college essays looming over us. But Friday afternoon (he’s a teen why should I be surprised at the last minute of things), his name pops up on my phone. “Hey mom, can I talk to you about something?” I am struck by how grown up he sounds.
He wants to stay another week. “I love it here.” Not something you get out of a teenage boy often! My heart breaks a little but is full of happiness for him. “Yes, son, sure you can!” Ok…I fuss a little, tell him about all the things we need to still do this summer, tell him I would have liked a little more notice, but gave him the ok in the end.
I miss him so much it hurts. I miss my human Google who can answer any random question that comes up like last week’s “do raccoons have thumbs?” I miss the wrestling that happens in my kitchen between my husband and him, I even miss the grunts I get when he finally emerges from his room to eat something at noon. I miss him.
All we want for our kids is to be happy, to find a place where they feel like they belong, to thrive. So why am I having such a hard time? I have said before I feel this undeniable shift in my family with him being a senior. This major change that is hanging over. This realization that things will never be the same.
My senior will come home from camp and we will hit the ground running for senior year. He will graduate, likely spend next summer at camp and then be off to share his amazingness at a college lucky enough to have him. This is it. I can feel the time I have left with him slipping away. Yes I know he will come home some, but don’t tell me it won’t be different because I know it will.
How can I be so proud of him, so excited for him, so ready for him to experience his next steps, yet so heartbroken at the same time? It’s hard to not feel like we are being left behind. Man, I feel like being a mom is living with constant contradictions.
I love being home with my babies, but I need a girls night out. I have no idea what I’m doing, but don’t tell me how to parent. I can’t wait till my kids can do some things independently, but don’t grow up too fast. I want my kids to go off into the world and be successful, but don’t forget about me.
Living with constant contradictions. It’s exhausting!
I have so much I still want to tell him. There is so much I think he still needs to learn. So many things I think I still need to learn from him. This human made me a mom. What a gift! What an honor it has and will continue to be. I don’t have any answers or wise words. Just an honest admission that I am struggling with the contradictions…smiling that he is living his best life, yet crying that I am not as big a part of it as I once was.
3 Responses
Same. Beautifully said ❤️
I feel all of this. It’s like you took what I was feeling and put it all into words.
My son is right with yours, literally. This is the one place that he can completely breathe and shine in his own way. This is his happy place since he was 6. Camp Albemarle holds a special place in his heart and in our family’s hearts, as my Mother, brother, and myself are all Camp Albemarle alum. Some of my best memories were made in that sound, and under that amazing tree… I am beyond grateful he gets to make memories of his own in the same places.
He excelled in CIT they asked him to stay and work as a JuCo. Fortunately, he does come home on the weekends, but those 36hrs go by faster than fast.
This is his last week there & I can feel him becoming sad that it’s over for this summer.
I am having great difficulty in this life shift, even though I know it would eventually happen. It’s always been only he & I since the moment he was born.
While I knew he would grow up and leave the nest, I’m still not prepared for it. This summer proved I’m not fully prepared, no matter how much my brain tells my heart this is the path we set out on so many years ago, and we knew this would be the end result of preparing him for life and the world.
I am so incredibly proud of him and this life he’s chosen, but I can’t help be sad through this life transition.
I had no idea you went there! It is such a special place and I keep trying to remind myself that he is happy and living his best life there, but dang does it hurt a little.