Bye Mom I Love You

Three little boys can, and often times are, a handful.  The memories however can be much harder to deal with.  My boys when they were younger always were right near me somewhere.  That is until they discovered freedom; bike riding, roller skating, the woods.  After that, mom wasn’t very interesting. How could I compete with a heap of moss or moldy sticks?  After they grew out of picking flowers for me they moved to rocks and other things that that I’m not sure I should mention here. But any mom knows exactly what I am speaking of. I always was quite happy with the things they brought me. (It was the things I found in their pockets that worried me.)  Of course I still proudly display the rock collection to this day.  They have now become the official ‘rock garden’.
Instead of calling them to dinner away from a Disney movie, I now have to send someone out or watch the street and hope they come by on their bikes. (I am still trying to convince them that my dinner table is not a conveyer belt for food and the refrigerator is not a food dispenser. They’re not buying it.)  One thing that has stuck with me, even if they have not, is what they started saying as they are running out the door. As I heard the screech of the screen door opening they would yell out, simultaneously. “Bye mom, I love you.” All in one gushing sentence. And each would echo the other. Those words would echo in my head and my heart. 
And now, my youngest son, in his efforts to keep up with his brothers, has discovered moldy mossy things too.  The other day, running out the door behind them, he echoed his older brothers with “Bye Mom I Love you!’  My heart skipped a beat and a tear welled in my eyes, ‘there goes another one I thought.’  And in the obsessive way mothers think, I thought about the day in which they move out—the day I hear “Bye Mom I love you” for the last time.

All mothers wince at the thought of an empty nest, and so do I.  But I think I will treat it as I have treated all the obstacles with my children.  I will look forward to watching them fly, I’ll be there when they fall and I’ll teach them all they are willing to learn.

Then on the other hand…. maybe I’ll call them every day just to make sure they are ok!
                                                                               Becky Derderian