Slowest breakup of my life

I watched a TikTok last night that said, "your son growing up will feel like the slowest breakup you've ever known." Ouch, stick a dagger in my heart. When I bribed Buck to ride to town with me for some quick shots, I only wanted to try out my new lens, and he gets out of school first, making him the kid that has to go! I wasn't prepared to need therapy when my editing collided with this interview on TikTok. It explained that we don't just parent one person; we parent several - newborn, baby, toddler, preschooler, pre-teen, teenager, young adult, and then a full-blown adult. This stupid video pointed out that we never get to properly say goodbye to these little people we've raised because we miss the transition and don't see it until Facebook memories show us sweet faces that we'll never see again. (I mean, at this point, I needed to be sedated.) This ONE TikTok made me go through the images I trashed and take a more brutal look. Right now, I don't care about or want to use the shots of him taking every prompt I gave him to the extreme - shoulders way back vs. relaxed, leg sticking out, but the wrong leg and not how I asked...that sort of thing. When I went through these photos for a second time, I saw his shit-eating grin and something he always does with his hands that I can't explain and he denies. He drops his head whenever he laughs at himself; his crooked smile that he got from me was right in front of me, frozen in time. I laughed at the shot of him looking in the abandoned garage instead of at me because he accused me of setting him up to get taken while I was freezing and trying to get this over with.

The letter explaining how fast life happens is not included with your explanation of benefits and hospital bills from birth. Maybe it was in the fine print; I missed it. It seems unfair to me that I will pour my heart & soul into this whole human, to one day give him over to the cold, cruel world - but I won't even notice it until it's too late and he's already just free, willy-nilling all around with no supervision or someone keeping him safe? I decline, no deal. It just can't be. The fact that I have to go through this twice doesn't sit well with my spirit. 

I tuck Cole in and kiss him on his forehead every night before bed. At some point, I stopped tucking Christopher in and started making a lot of noise on my way to his room before opening the door and repeating the exact words every night "love you, don't stay up late" When was the last time I tucked him in? I don't even remember. When was the last time I kissed him? YEARS. I'll traumatize him tonight because I'm going to tuck him in like a Chipotle burrito with extra nice. I can't risk looking back knowing that I realized when he was 15 that I could only tuck him in approximately 1,095 times and didn't take advantage of it. Wildly after this TikTok slapped me in the face. 

"While I know he loves me, I know soon I won't be the sun around which he spins. It's an ongoing wonder to me that I grew one of my best friends and the best man I know in my own body."