recalibration

Lately I haven’t been holding my son. I know he loves me, because every morning when he wakes up he reluctantly allows me to smother him with a thirty second hug before he decides he’s too big for me to hold him like a baby. He hates being called a baby, and hates being held like one.

When he was still the tiny little baby I was always holding him, soaking in his smell, his warmth, and that feeling of sleepiness I can only get from being as near to him as humanly possible. In his first two years he was rarely out of my grip, and felt like a permanent attachment just slathered onto me.

As he gets older the sharp edges of his joints no longer fit into the curves of my body the way they used to. His body and legs twist and extend further and further beyond my torso, and all I can think about is bringing him home, holding his impossibly tiny body in both of my arms, and still feeling like he would slip right out of my hands. His lanky body is anything but the sweet little ball of chubbiness I had brought home so long ago. His breath isnt the sweet smell of breastmilk. And his face morphs into reflections of both of his parents, his attitude, the solid indicator that he had come from the both of us.

For most of his life he has been my secret refuge, the only thing in life that makes it worth experiencing. I kept him close to me because I couldn’t stand the thought of being away for too long. he taught me more about life since before he was born, and I think about all of the conversations ive had with him over the course of his life. I wonder how he feels about me, what he'll think when he gets older. Whether or not, im still doing a good enough job, and never being able to get the idea of both the future and the present out of my mind, how am I going to teach him to be the man I envision him being. How much of him will be me, and how much of him will be his dad.

Most of all, I just think about our time alone, hoping that everything I do is enough for him to forgive me, for all of the things I've done wrong, for all that I will do wrong.

Mainly I just don’t want him to think he was a tool to get over the hardships in my life. And even though I credit his conception as a saving grace in my life, I don’t want him to grow up thinking his only purpose is saving me.

I wonder whether or not he will feel the same as I do about life. how much of our lives will he recreate, the way previous generations have been subconsciously following cycles. I wonder if we helped set him up for success with the way life has led us, or if it will just create further issues for him as he gets older. I think about how two years ago, I was thinking about where I was four years ago, each time thinking im better off where I was in that moment, than I was in the previous.

Today I held my son for the first time in months, for longer than two minute consecutively, and it felt just like that tiny baby they put on my chest after waking up from stitching me back together. It was the calmest I had felt in forever, and even though my allergies had been flooding my eyes with tears, I couldn’t stop the steady flow once they arrived. I thought about all of those things I had before, I imagined where we had been, where we are, and where we will be going. And for the first time in what has felt like forever, I felt like I was living my life the way I have been meant to.