When The Season Changes

I pulled onto the highway and accelerated as I merged into traffic. A Honda CRV passed me and suddenly a lump built in my throat and I was surprised by the sudden emptiness in my heart. I had just said goodbye to my son and watched his CRV pass me as he headed back to his apartment and I started my trip back home to Texas. I fought back the tears and tried to focus on driving and maneuvering my way across Oklahoma City, but once I was on the open highway, I found myself alone with my thoughts and struggling with an empty heartache. My son had lived in Oklahoma for almost two years, but this was my first trip to visit him alone without his siblings. It was also my first trip to visit my daughter since her wedding. Her new home was on the way to Oklahoma City and I would see her again on my way home. As I stared out at the long stretch of open road ahead of me, I wondered, “Does every mama’s heart ache every time she leaves her children or is this the heartache of a changing season?” I thought about the summer my children and I took a ten day vacation and traveled to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon and then back through the Guadalupe Mountains of New Mexico. My son, Jerrod, had just received his driver’s license that year and he enjoyed taking his turn driving. My youngest, and my only daughter, was thirteen but would celebrate her fourteenth birthday before summer was gone. On the way home from that trip I remember battling the same empty feeling as I realized my children were all teenagers and no longer little. It was true that my boys had been teens for a few years, but the reality that a season in my life had passed and another lay ahead didn’t really occur to me until that trip.

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