I want to shout out an "I love you" to my son. He touched me in a special way today, and this is why...
Things have been changing between my son and I. I know he's growing up; he's thirteen, but it feels like he doens't recall at all the many special times we had together all through his young life. It's like they all have been snatched from his memory and it makes me so sad for I treasure those times and memories. Sometimes it seems he only views me now as a mom who is always after him to get his schoolwork done and that is all.
But I remember doing all kinds of fun things with him when he was a little guy. I was an older mom, and I was in my early forties when he was a tike and we were having a ball climbing up and through all the tubes in places like Chucky Cheese and McDonalds on their main play area apparatus. I remember going to the library when he was one, two, three and coming home with a mountain of picture books to read with him, and he couldn't get enough of it. I would read to him all the time and try to put life into the books and make them fun. But he doens't seem to recall any of it.
Or, so I thought.
We recently placed a bookshelf by the entrance to the back bathroom where he takes his showers. Because I am sentimental about those times when I would read to him when he was little, I kept all these years some of his 4x4 little toddler books with thick cardboard pages. And I plopped some of them amongst the sea of books on that bookshelf. When he came out of his shower this morning he took awhile to come out of the room, and when he finally did, he came out to me in the livingroom, and in his hand he was holding one of these toddler books, one that I had particular fun time reading to him while making it as animated as possible (It was about a little girl named, Amy, who no one could figure out what she wanted, she kept saying, "no!" to everything). So, there my thirteen year old son was, with his wet hair, saying to me, "I'll read this book to you, Mom." And he stood there, and he read it so cute, and it took everything in me not to burst out into tears...it touched me so. My son reading to me that book I used to read to him so many years ago. After he was done, he said, "This book rocks!" and he gave it a little hug. :lol:
He had remembered.
Anyone who has a teenage son or two might know what I am going through. These boys need to grow up and be less about mom, it's all part of it. Even with knowing that, it can still be a little hard, though, for the mom. But this event today, brought also to my mind, how there is one book I got as a gift at my baby shower for him, that my son has always chosen to keep with his own books, year after year. He says he will always keep it. When I am feeling sad about the times it feels he doesn't appreciate me as much, I should go to his books and read through it. If he kept it this long, he must mean it. It is called. "Love You, Forever."
http://www.amazon.com/Love-You-Fore...?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242671879&sr=8-1#reader