April 30, 2018
If he could only see the expression on my face when he sent this. It was similar to the time I used a Groupon for Botox and looked like an evil genius for 3 months. It didn’t matter where he said he was going, it could have been Narnia and my reaction would have been the same. He isn’t coming home.
“Bye Mom!” is all I got when I dropped my 4 year-old off at school on the first day of kindergarten and it was the same last fall at his college. Whether I like it or not, he’s moved out and it’s time to clean out his room. I entered his room wearing swim goggles and a dust mask then quickly added hard soled shoes once I discovered inadvertent LEGO booby traps. I thought an orange vest would be overkill since there wasn’t much chance of getting hit by a car in his room. I solved the great mystery of where socks go as everything I picked up had either a sock, a penny, or a rock under it. Rocks? Some things had all three. It took me 4 hours and lots of tears as I rifled through my only son’s last eighteen years. He wore a brown leather bomber jacket size 2T. He was going to be a paleontologist. I managed to reduce his childhood into a shoebox. Most other things were donated or hazmat. I recovered 8 single socks, 12 spoons, several sports pictures of the cutest dark haired little boy I ever saw, and $22.41 in change. I know he will be back from time to time but never to live home for good. I look forward to being annoyed when he comes home to visit and puts an empty milk carton back in the fridge and leaves his dirty laundry on the bathroom floor.
