Sons

A boy is the only thing that God can use to make a man.-- Author Unknown

Somewhere down the years they grew big. They think they're men. [I won't dissuade them just yet.]. Somewhere along the way they grew too big for my lap, too big for cuddles, too brave to be afraid.

Sssh. Don't tell. Sons wring mother's hearts more than daughters. Mother's have to be brave with sons so that their sons grow courageous. See I wanted to keep them safe, snugly tucked under my heart; they wanted to fly like hawks, wild & free. I loosed the jesses.

When they wanted a boat I taught them to row & pretended not to see how precariously their cockleshell rocked upon the sea. When they wanted to camp I bought them a tent, showed them how to pitch it & set up a camp that wouldn't blow away in the night. When we had snakes in the chook pen I handed the sugar bag & the rake to my sons though I know perfectly well how to catch a carpet snake & put it somewhere else.

I pretended not to worry when they all climbed in the old rattle trap on the farm & went careering through the orchard until the petrol ran out. There is a reason men were not allowed to serve in the temple until after they'd turned 25. Young men have no fear, no sense of mortality. They need to know they can walk the edge & survive. I bit my tongue & held my silence when they went sky diving, scurfed behind trawlers in white shark country, rolled themselves up in their surf board bags & slept on beaches.

'We'll be fine, mum! Don't worry.'

Pardon? I'm their mother. Of course I worry.

Parenting sons is not for wooses. And perish the thought it gets any better. My mother has sons. One flew for a living; low level flying. It doesn't get much more dangerous than that & one day his plane plowed into the ground. Her other son lives aboard a 50' cat & is careering round the Pacific with his wife & kids. He's been doing it for a while but you'd better believe she worries. Doesn't say anything. Life's for living, remember? Each phone call is a reminder that all's still well, they haven't been boarded by pirates, sunk beneath the waves without a trace or all gone mad & abanded ship like those strangely abandoned boats of the Bermuda Triangle.

I'm starting to see signs that my sons are settling down. The strange between times of growing from boys into men is almost done. We have all survived by God's grace & cautiously, dare I hope, they've turned out OK after all. *breathes sigh of relief*

{Well, what did you think I'd say? That they are wonderful & terrific, which they are, & they're mine & you can't have them? ;P}