Boys of Summer

I've always felt a certain sadness at the phrase The Boys of Summer.  It has an ephemeral quality that I find very affecting.

Little League season has come and gone, at least for our local teams, and none of my boys played this summer.  I miss Little League terribly because its absence marks something that was a large part of our family summer but has now passed into history unmourned by any but me.

The end of our Little League era is a small part of the boys' moving away from me.  Their learning to drive is part of this, first jobs, college classes.  It is all good and right, and I'm glad for it because they need to do it.  They are becoming more and more the men they were meant to be, and I am inexpressibly proud of them.  I love the men they are; godly, strong and independent, marvelously creative, loyal to their friends and devoted to their beliefs.  I love the men they are, but I miss the boys they were.

Down the block stands a house where I have never seen anyone about.  There's a screened room on the side that for three years has held a baby's exersaucer, but I've never seen a baby in it.  Last week I saw those folks putting up a swing set.  I nearly stopped to comment on how fortunate - how blessed - they are to have a child in their lives.  I so miss the swing set days.

After the tornado, my little Rosebud and her family moved away, but she had already stopped coming to our house every day.  By the time she was four she had three younger siblings; her parents felt the need of a family nanny.  She went away quite suddenly after four years of daily visits.  I thought I would have another year to let her go.  She telephoned me on a recent morning on her way to preschool.  I felt I would bleed to death right there on the phone.

I don't currently have any children in my life under the age of fifteen, and it is a poverty.

I'm glad I didn't have more children for their own sakes, because I am a world-class bad parent.  But oh, I wish I had had more.  I wish I could have more now.  Mostly I wish I could go back and be a better mama to the ones I had.  And yes, I sometimes wallow in these regrets.