Everyone Is Wrong

The Boy is very affectionate for a teenager. He is always hugging and kissing me, sometimes to the point that I’m like, “Get off me!” Everyone told me that this part would go away, that he wouldn’t be a mama’s boy forever. Everyone said that once he reached these teenage years, all the attention he paid to me would be spent on his friends. Everyone said that he would forget to kiss me goodnight, and wouldn’t give me hugs in public anymore, and I would no longer be the first one he looked for in the crowd at his games.

I heard about the Derrion Albert video earlier today, and I resisted watching it all day. Because just the thought of watching a life being taken so brutally really snatches something out of my spirit that I don’t want to lose. I want to keep a portion of my naïveté, you see…I want to continue to believe that these things only happen to bad folks. Every day I’m proven wrong. Every day, I see reality and it smacks me upside my head, hard. Every day, I put myself in the place of the mother that loses her child, whether it be on the streets of Chicago, or in the deserts of Afghanistan, and little bits of my spirit are torn away. Those mothers will never again feel the wetness of their sons and daughters kissing them goodnight, they will never see their baby wave to them from the football field after a game, they will never see their eyes smile again.

Tonight, before The Boy went to bed, I sat him down and looked him dead in his eyes and told him that I loved him. Oh, I always tell him, but this time, there was a hardness, an almost desperation in my tone. I told him like my life depended on it. He looked at me, a little puzzled at first, and then he smiled. And when he leaned over and kissed and hugged me, I had only one thought:

I am so glad that everyone has been wrong.

Peace…