If you look closely among the everyday items littering our mudroom, you’ll see a pair of well-worn white Vans. They belong to the kiddo and they’ve occupied this house since the Friday after Christmas. For two glorious weeks these walls have been filled with good jokes, junk food, bad YouTube shows and old movies. There have been card games and football games, beat the alarm clock games and Monopoly games. There have been good conversations, funny stories, hard conversations, and laughter and tears and quiet. There was even a night when the kiddo fell asleep on the couch and ended up sharing the dog blanket with the girls. So much for 800 count Egyptian cotton. It’s just one more way I know he truly is a college kid.
I’ve taken to calling this season catch and release parenting. If we’re lucky enough to catch our son for a few minutes (or a few hours or a few days), to hear us talk you’d think we’d won the lottery because we feel like we have. But we also know we have to release him.
Tomorrow is that day. Slightly before dawn I have to say “until next time” and let my precious boy fly back to his hometown, the city he loves full of his people, his girl, and his school. My only solace the fact that my mom will pick him up from the airport. She gives great hugs and always has a smile for those she loves. While she isn’t my stand in, I’m comforted knowing when I can’t be with him, she most often can.
This will be the longest stretch we’ve been apart, from tomorrow until sometime in early March when I visit him on his turf and snag another hug. Between now and then we’ll rely on FaceTime and phone calls and texting but trust me when I say it won’t be the same as having his shoes in my mudroom. #BuehlerLife #LastEveOfWinterBreak
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