I Need a Moment

We are in a busy season in Hicksville. As well as at work. The garden is producing produce at a manic pace, and I'm trying to keep up with the canning. The one blessing from having been hailed out twice this spring?

The green beans didn't start really producing until this week - when the cucumbers are (hopefully) starting to die back. I cannot imagine trying to can pickles and green beans and blackeyed peas all at the same time.

I'm thinking next year I just might plant beans and peas late on purpose!

When not trying to keep up with the garden and the yard and around the house (and you'll note - I said "trying" - let's not kid anyone. I haven't washed towels in 2 weeks and just used the last washcloth. I'm at a critical laundry point and we simply won't discuss the state of the rest of the house), I'm working extra hours at work in a vain attempt to keep up since we're down a person. Our new graduate students started trickling in last week, and I fully expect a deluge of 'em on Friday. It's also the end of our fiscal year soon, so I'm trying to make sure that funds are spent, and spent properly, and that everything is balancing correctly.

I feel like some days I'm in a whirlwind of activity - of paperwork and pickles, students and laundry and practices and weeding and accounts and phones and memos and beans and chickens and more and more I just want to stand still for a moment and yell

STOP.

Stop - and let me watch as my eldest progresses on his walk to manhood. As he takes the next steps toward being an adult - driving, SATs, college planning, girlfriends, and of course, football. Let me have time to soak in his handsome face - the same one that once upon a time chewed on his tiny fist while scowling at me because he didn't understand why bottles in the hospital were so easy to drink, and nursing was hard. The same face that would light up a room when he saw me - his mom - come in to pick him up at the end of the day. The one that now will casually toss off a "later, crazy lady" and I quietly say to his back - "I love you too, E."

Stop - and let me have a moment to see my youngest take those first few steps of his walk to manhood. As he gets ready from his transition from his last year of junior high to high school next year. Let me soak it all in as he begins to shed childhood - and Yu Gi Oh cards and The Suite Life - in favor Hannah Montana and his iPod. Let me remember his sweet little face as he laughed uproariously whenever he was amused. And let me slowly adjust to his deeper voice, his hairier legs and the new more grownup face he sports these days.

Give me time. It's going by so FAST. I only have a few years left with my boys and I need a moment. A moment as I figure out how to let them go when I so desperately want to just keep them little.

Some time to just....let mom adjust.