Random Musings

A man now....

I was in a parent/teacher conference this morning when my phone buzzed at my side. It was a team meeting, so there were other teachers present, and one of my colleagues was going over with the parent the child's work in her class. I had already said what I had to say, and this call was important. It was one I had been expecting.

I excused myself, and went through the door leads back into my own classroom.

It was my youngest son, calling from his seat on the plane taking him from Dallas to Korea. He said that I was the last person he phoned before the service was scheduled to be switched off.

He was scared. I could hear it and feel it, but all I could do was talk when what I really wanted to do was hold him for just a few moments more. But it’s probably best that we weren’t together. He’s a man now, and he didn’t need his mother tearing up and making him more apprehensive than he was at that moment. He can remember me hugging him at the Atlanta airport, when I was just Mom, and not the blubbering mess I would have been there with him in Dallas.

Instead, I told my son that I loved him, and that I knew he was going to be fine. I told him that he was having an experience at twenty that I still haven’t had in my life- that nobody in his family has had, and that he should make the most of his time in Korea. I urged him to do his best, to listen, follow his orders, and to learn. This is just the first folder in the portfolio of his life, and he should fill it with rich memories.

I didn’t cry until I was on the phone this evening with my own mother.

I called her to let her know that I had heard from him. She worries about all of her ducks. It seems; however, that the child had spent his last hour or so in the States, phoning and texting his loved ones. For some reason, the thought of him sitting there, all by himself in the airport doing that, touched something in me.

Seems like just yesterday, he was in short pants and high top white Stride-Rites nose pressed to the glass as he eagerly watched the plane pull up to the jetway… running to get a hug from his father as he emerged from the tunnel, home from one of his business trips.

Mom still calls him, “Pun”, short for Punkin.

I tried real hard not to let her hear that I was having a bad moment- she worries- but I think she did. She didn’t let on, though.

I’m glad of that.