proud to be his mum
Today 18 years ago at 4.19am our
eldest son Declan was born
How quickly time has passed,
one moment I hold him in my arms, the next I look up
To him for he is taller now
than I will ever be
I’ve taken out his photo album
and look at the earliest images we have of him; he was such a small, fragile
thing and yet so determined to be reckoned with
I hardly look at these early images
as they always inflict pain and it’s sometimes easier to turn away from that
and as he’s still at home with us I don’t need the reminder, but every now and
then I do
The moment he came into our
lives we were parents, a fact of life that will only end with our deaths, in life
there is death.
I baked an apple crumble last
night for us to eat on the morning of his birthday; the apples are from a tree
we planted in his first year
A gift from two friends, one is
no longer with us as he drowned in a sailing accident, leaving behind a wife
and two then young daughters
Each year as I pick the apples
I am reminded of our son’s birth year as well as our friend’s untimely death
I find it almost unbearable to
hold the two thoughts in my mind at the same time; in life there is death
But today is a day for
celebrating the fact that our small boy has grown and is now almost a man, I
say almost for I am his mother, I know he sees himself in a different light
What happens between the two
extremes is the stumbling fumbling make-do business we call a life and most of
all what matters on the journey from here to there is love
all of it and every kind of
love
Comments
he found a friend dead from suicide a few years back.
how strange. life and death.
and motherhood.
Dana, a blessing indeed. Watching our boys grow is beyond words, it's just so WonderFull, small miracles really.
Jude she also has lost friends in the last couple of years, so sad so young.
A moving post Saskia but how lovely to have planted a tree to grow with your son and to be able to celebrate his manhood with apples from the same tree.
i think he has your Flair?
Children. And he will be your boy until he brings his own child through....it changes then. Not the love, but the sense of them, boy/man.
So happy BIRTH day to you, in honor of that moment 18 years ago.
(I have a daughter of 40 .... life goes on, no matter what !)
van binnen en van buiten
als jongen word je geboren
een " man " worden daar werk je zelf aan .
veel geluk daarbij dat wens ik jou toe
aan de ouders nog vele jaren van intens genieten , liefde is de basis
M.
I realise this sounds a tad greedy, but young parents need all the help they can get;-)
So I made a giraffe stencil in lieu of the usual animals and stencilled appr. 100 giraffes on as many hand-made paper cards and my sister got them from the printer once Declan was born and they had gotten the date wrong! So the printer who was mortified and so very sorry because all the cards were hand stencilled by me, had to print them all over again with the correct date etc. and print the giraffes in such a way one might imagine they had been stencilled by me personally! phew that is quite a long story. Of course the new mother=me only had eyes for her baby and couldn't care less: I knew he was there as did my husband and that was all that mattered.
yes Debbie being able to use the fruits from his birth year to bake a cake is quite special and I love the symbolism of life continuing each year with new and different stages of growth. I hope your daughter's situation improves, 'tis the way it is and having to watch as a parent is rather tough at times. You can only do so much.
Grace he has flair in bundles, how nice you think that comes from me, I'm not very flair-some, my mother is, perhaps it skipped a generation, I'll mention it to her...that will make her happy and proud!
dank je wel Els, hem te zien opgroeien is een groot geschenk.
Juist Maria, liefde is de basis, hij zit zo vol kracht en vertrouwen, ik kan er als moeder zo intens van genieten en ben verheugd daar getuige van te mogen zijn.
Nancy, bittersweet exactly, the moment you become a parent you're flooded with emotions; immediately you're vulnerable and powerful at the same time, because of this immense love for someone else who depends on you completely; I enjoy witnessing his growth in every aspect of that word, it's a privilege.
With an 18 and 20 year old sons, I understand this strange limbo where they are boys and men both. It is such an unbelievable privilege to have parented them, and also the hardest thing I've done in life to date.
I am mostly avoiding older pictures, by the way, because it is just so hard to notice how quickly it all went!
What a wonderful post!