while you're ahead…

Phew, that was some weekend… there are certain moments in your life that make you shift your understanding, your direction, your point of view.  And I’m not talking about the really ‘big’ ones, your marriage, the birth of your child… but the quiet moment that sneak up on you when you don’t expect it, the ones that you don’t recognise till after they’ve passed.  This weekend for me was one of them.  I won’t get into details because I value the privacy of my children too much and, in the grand scheme of things, it was not a big deal… but to me it was.

I feel that as much as ‘he’ has grown up a little (I hope so) so have I, that as he has learnt a lesson (I REALLY hope so), so have I.

I was reminded that my most important and hardest job as a mother is not to love them regardless of all the stupid choices they make (loving them is the easy bit) but to let them make the stupid choices and be there to help them pick up the pieces.  To let them go down their own path even when as an adult I can see the obstacles up ahead.  And it’s difficult, and nobody teaches you how to do it, you both stumble in the dark.

THAT is the hardest task of all.

The Real Work  (Wendell Berry)