Five More Days

Five days until Christmas!  Five days until I see my family again!  I'm so excited I really can't think of much else. Well except Star Wars.  If you watched The Big Bang Theory last week then you have an idea of how I felt watching the movie.  On opening night, I even texted both First Daughter and First Son a T-minus 15 minutes and counting text BEFORE I streamed the episode Saturday morning.  How embarrassing to be so publicly and correctly adapted from fact to fiction.  I'm a fan girl and I loved it.  But not as much as I love my kids. 

Its been since last Christmas, when I'd been able to see First Son, and his wife, The Girl With No Plans, but we talk almost weekly on line.  I can't wait to hug them and let my eyes drink them in.  And it's been only a few months since First Daughter moved back there but it feels like a year since I had a meal and talked with her about life.  And we text at least twice a week.  Seeing her and her Husband In Everything Except The Paper, again will be just as wonderful as the last time.  I wish I had more time with them, but a quick trip is all I can do this year. 

I'm sure even with a weekend together we will shove everything we can into those days and nights for the memories will have to last a year. 

I think this is the hardest thing about having children, watching them grow up and leave you.  Don't get me wrong I wanted my kids to move out when they grew up, tried to push them out the doors, but at the same time, those doors were always open in case they needed to come home.  Now as they are both approaching thirty or in their thirties, it seems my time alone is finally here.  It seems they would never need their old bedrooms, and quite frankly I moved away from them almost two years ago as well.  I'm am at the same time, proud of their successes and miss them both more than I can ever express in written form.

BUT in five days I will show them.  With all the love I have to give. I will listen and be empathetic to their dreams and lives and hold them and cherish them for who they have grown into being.  I will trust their decisions but be there to offer advice where I see they might need a different point of view, but as always I will only be telling stories.  Stories that hopefully shed light on their situations.  Or in other words I'll be the best parent I know how to be and have always been.  I'm one of the lucky ones, for I would pick my children to be friends if I met them on the street, and I know it's mutual.  So heres to five more days.

Cheers