School starts next week. And my heart hurts about it. It isn’t that my kids don’t fight with each other. It isn’t that I don’t have those days where my three little darlings drive me insane. It isn’t that I don’t enjoy the bits of respite that school provides.
What it IS, is the knowledge that I only get eighteen summers with each of them. And there are so many things we didn’t do. We didn’t go camping. We didn’t roast marshmallows. We didn’t sleep out in the backyard. We didn’t do all of the epic summer things that I had planned. The hurt is the regret of all the things we didn’t get to do. It’s that familiar ache of motherhood.
We did hike. We did travel. We did love each other and eat corn on the cob and stay up late. We did eat snow-cones and go to the movies and play with friends and sleepover with cousins. We did swim like fishes and perform. A lot of dids to outweigh the did-nots.
We didn’t do enough but we did all that we could and what I can do now is hope that they will remember something, anything. And that they’ll take whatever that meaningful moment is with them into their hearts and future. That they’ll sit on the porch with their own kids one day and say, “There was this one summer…”
I love them so much it hurts. It always does, in that mother-hurt kind of way that is as painful as it is treasured. That loving and losing that happens all at the same time. I can’t stop next week from coming, but for tonight, I think we’ll pack up the car, head for the mountains and watch the meteor shower!
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