Photo Credit (Kevin Momaney)

You’re gonna miss this
You’re gonna want this back
You’re gonna wish these days hadn’t gone by so fast
These are some good times
So take a good look around
You may not know it now
But you’re gonna miss this

~~~Trace Adkins~~~~

When my boys were young my mom always told me “Once they go to school, the time goes by so quick Tam, they are in kindergarten, then you blink and they are in Middle School, and before you know it they are graduating.” At the time I was in the middle of screaming toddlers, and babies that wouldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I couldn’t see the fact that they were going to grow up so fast.

Kyle is getting ready to move out, and Connor is gone, gone in a way that never returns, gone in a way that all I have left are memories. Memories that I cling to with all I have, like algae clings to your foot when you get out of a lake, or the sand from the beach that wont brush off of your body no matter how hard you try.

I do miss it, I miss running from one Baseball Practice to another. The times when Kyle had Golf at Mohawk and Connor played Suburban Football. Trying to be in 2 places at the same time. I even miss their squabbling and snapping at each other. I miss my boys, I miss them when they were little, all snugly, and even when they were too big to snuggle, when they needed me.

The summers of Tournament Ball, every weekend a different tournament, in a different town. Pack the car on Thursday night, games on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and then get ready to do it all again the next weekend, with practices in between. Once the summer was over we went straight into Suburban Football.  With maybe a week of vacation squeezed in somewhere, if we tried hard enough.

Then he morphed into Middle School Baseball, and Babe Ruth and finally High School Ball, all benchmarks of growing up. Not as needy as before, he could get himself where he needed to be, but still needed Gatorade and seeds on a regular basis.

Kyle needs this, he needs to move out on his own, and grow, and spread his wings, but my house will be so empty. I don’t know if I am really ready for an empty nest, although I would never tell him that he couldn’t go, I’m not that kind of mom. I just know I will miss him, but he wont be far away, I can call him, or text him, and he will come home to visit. It is a different kind of missing.