Of all the challenges that you will face as a mother, the hardest one is to let them go. It is not picking up after them, meetings with teachers, or watching them drive out of the driveway for the first time alone.
It happens slowly you don't even always feel it happening. Your too excited watching them take their first steps or celebrating the first word that you have waited for them to speak. You teach them all the things to become independent. To get dressed, to go to the bathroom, to pour their own bowl of cereal.
As they get older the challenges get more real. The person they are becoming mirrors what you have modeled yourself.
That saying "blood, sweat and tears", it had to come from a mom who had witnessed her little human fly away all the way to the West.
My little boy who took forever to grow hair, has grown a mustache. My little boy who loved trains now drives an ambulance and saves lives. My little boy who had the worst time managing his own bedroom now pays rent on an apartment. My little boy who ate only chicken nuggets and mac and cheese (and to be fair was about all I could cook) appreciates good food and good drinks.
I'm no stranger to how good-bye's feel. But I have to admit that leaving Wyoming pulled a little harder. As the landscaped changed over the miles to my boy's childhood home I felt the enormity of what being a mom really feels like.
The sad, the proud and the honor of it all.
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