Home for Christmas

My son is home for Christmas.

I almost said “my boy is home” but pulled myself up short.  At 28, 6’5”, and as self-sufficient as a man can be, my son is no longer a boy.  Since the beginning of time that law of nature has been tugging at the hearts of mothers, while simultaneously engendering a sense of pride that often requires a quick intake of breath.

Right now, he sleeps a floor below me, in the bedroom that will always be his, as promised.  It’s one of the things I’m making right from the last generation to this one – my bedroom disappeared when I drove away to college, but for as long as he wants it, and probably beyond that, he will have a bedroom wherever I live.

Someday he may sleep in that room with a person he hopes to spend the rest of his life with, perhaps grandchildren will snuggle into the matched pair of single four-posters in the other downstairs bedroom – but for now, he walks seriously and singly through life, studying, planning, laughing, training, thinking.

There’s that intake of breath again.  Have I mentioned that I’m very proud of him?

For now, he sleeps and dreams downstairs, of things I probably can’t imagine, surrounded by photos of his childhood, the tassel from his graduation cap, the book of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons we read together and giggled over for so many years, the old calendar with spectacular panoramas of great golf courses which never goes out of date, the picture on the wall of the scoreboard at a San Francisco Giants baseball game wishing him a happy 15^th birthday, the soft bear he named Booey when he was two – the one with the space where the nose used to be, because he very simply loved it away.

Many of those days were a blur for him, the speeding train of growing up.  For me, they stand out in bas relief, a fresco that I can walk along and remember so clearly, not only what happened, but how I felt about it.

I’ll spend the next five days drinking him in, before he flies off again to his good and productive life.  My mother, who loves him as I do, likes to say that she just enjoys sitting and “watching his hair grow.”  She does it overtly and dramatically, making him blush – I’m more of the furtive type, but I love him no less.

This is my best gift.  My son, my boy, is home for Christmas.  

My two favorite men -- Thomas and Robert

☆*♥☆♥*☆