There Are No Goodbyes and a Thousand of Them As You Grow, My Child

When does it shift?

Where my being enough for you, simply isn’t?

Does it happen as quickly as Mommy to Mom?

Will you be the tide and I’m shivering in the sand?

Is every beautiful little piece of proud independence just one step closer to being one step further from me?

That little walk with your puffed out chest, elbows up, my knee bent.
Cheering for you, hands outstretched.

The same hand that hangs at my thigh when you find your confident stride.

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Your words with proud inflections and overly pronounced syllables become polished and profound.

Lazily rolling around on the floor together, afternoons spent as your jungle gym, holding you above me like I could lift you forever.

Storing away your little bibs, your outfit now so grown up.

Your calls in the night.

My aching for rest, your aching for comfort.

One day, an aching silence.

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The drawn-out breakup almost.

There are no goodbyes, and there are a thousand of them.

As you untangle me from you.

I’ll never be ready for something I’ve been preparing you for my whole life.

But you will always be that love letter I will read over and over.

Because you were and always will be . . .

More than enough for me.