Letting go…

This morning, as I lay in bed desperately trying to claw back some sleep after another sleepless night, Lewis crept in to tell me that he was going out. As I prised my eyes open enough to see the time I realised that it was only half past eight. “But I haven’t even seen you yet!” I told him. “I know, but we can spend time together another day can’t we,” he said, “I’m growing up now Mum, you have to get used to me not being around as much!”. And as I swallowed the lump in my throat and watched him go, I knew that he was right.

Letting your children grow up is probably the hardest thing about being a parent. It’s just so heart wrenching to realise that your baby, your little boy, who used to think that YOU were his whole life, now has a life that most of the time, doesn’t involve you at all. These days it’s all about the skate park, hanging out at the rec, chatting on face time and Instagram and looking on the iPad at clothes and trainers. And at the age of eleven, I really wasn’t ready for it.

From the moment that he was born, and made me a mummy for the very first time, Lewis has been my whole world. And I was his. As a baby he would cuddle for as long as I would let him, he would gaze up at me with his big brown eyes identical to my own, and we would stay that way for hours. As a toddler he followed me around like a lost puppy. I couldn’t even go to the toilet without him, I would trip over him at every turn and at night he would sleep, snuggled up against me, holding on to me as though his life depended on it.

And after Joseph, I needed him just as much as he needed me. I found myself, rightly or wrongly, leaning on him for comfort and support and inadvertently, he pulled us through. Although we tried to hide our grief as best we could, he just KNEW. He would slip his little hand inside of mine and squeeze it so tight, just willing me to smile again. He became a joker, using all of his funniest faces and craziest power ranger moves until he had us in stitches. He was my reason for living. Literally. And without him there is no way that I would have made it through.

At the age of four Lews Dad and I separated and for the first time in our lives, it was just the two of us. And it was hard. I was devastated by the end of my marriage but yet again Lewis reclaimed his place in my bed and we held eachother tight and reassured eachother that it would all be okay. And between us, we found a way to muddle through.

On Lewis’s first day at school I cried as he got dressed, as I styled his hair (by this age is was ALL about the spikes!) and as we drove the short journey to his new school. I cried as we said goodbye, as he ran through the door without a second look back and as I returned to my car I sat there and sobbed. That was the first time that I felt I was losing a tiny piece of him and it hurt so much. I drove home, snotting and sobbing and thinking how on earth am I going to cope without him, and in all of my emotional turmoil I crashed my car smash bang into the middle of a brick wall.

Things did get easier. We fell into our routine of days at school, which by coincidence I also got a job at, and at night we would play together, eat together and then tuck ourselves up in bed and watch a DVD. Together. We must have watched Beethoven a few hundred times over those early years before Lew would fall asleep beside me despite his empty bed next door.

We braved holidays, just the two of us, and we made some lovely memories together. We had days out every weekend, became regulars at our local carvery, spent hours creating models out of empty cereal boxes and plastic bottles or playing in the park. And every day Lewis would tell me, “You’re my best friend in the whole world” and I honestly didn’t think that I could love my boy any more than I did at that time.

And then Gaz came along and I agonised over how Lewis would react. It had been just Lew and I for two long years and not only was another man sharing his Mums affections, but he was moving in, taking his place in my bed and our lives were all about to change massively. But it was far easier than I imagined it would be, and in no time at all it went from being just the two of us to being just the three of us.

Although Lewis spent alternate weekends with his Dad, our weekends were filled with quality time together. We spent all week looking forward to those weekends, squeezed every hour of fun into them and on Monday mornings when Lewis went back to school and Gaz to work, it would be with a heavy heart that I waved them off.

Although Lewis had lots of friends, who often came for tea or vice versa, he had none who lived close by. And yet somewhere around the age of eight, probably around the time that Eva came along, Lewis found a friend just a few houses down and discovered that playing out was actually way more fun than spending time with us. At first it would just be a couple of hours after school, I would hear them round the back kicking a ball about or clambering up a tree. And then it became weekends, where he would disappear all day, coming back to ask could he have dinner/tea/sleep over at various other friends houses. And slowly but surely our quality time together slipped away from us.

Before we knew it we had gone from having all of our child’s attention to practically none at all and I found it particularly hard to accept. I felt like a spoilt child, stamping my feet because my best friend no longer wanted to play with me. I had gone from being someone who Lewis considered to be hilarious to someone who he now saw as more of an embarrassment. I noticed that he would delete my comments on Instagram and quickly turn off facetime when I walked in the room. I was no longer considered fun and was now just a means to an end until he could get out and play with his mates. Over night I became a taxi driver, a cash machine and a personal shopper when he decided that he needed a new wardrobe to fit his new found social life.

These days our quality time is limited to a monthly hair cut, which if I’m lucky will give me an hour if there’s a queue, meaning I can get around three yes or no answers out of him inbetween him reading the sports pages of the daily paper. I get snatched conversations during car journeys to football, his mates houses, his dad’s, where I try to find out what he has been up to at school, “Not much”, or out with his mates, “Just playing”. We drag him on the occasional day out where he shuffles his feet and taps away on his phone and repeatedly asks us, “What time will we be going home?”.

The children love Lewis and when he returns home after a weekend at his Dads or from various friends/football/parties, they literally greet him with open arms. “Dewis is home!!” they declare and even Harry sits up in his high chair and beams with delight. And Lewis adores his the children and showers them with cuddles and kisses and yet the age gap becomes more apparant each day. Whilst Lewis is off doing his own thing, the three youngest are merely sitting here waiting for him to return.

And it is heartbreaking to think that actually, this is only going to get harder. With high school looming in September there will literally come a point when the only time we see our son is when we pin him down to eat and while he sleeps at night. And before we know it he will be at college, moving away to university and in no time at all my eldest, my first born baby boy, will have a life of his own and as parents we will just have to watch from the sidelines.

Already I find myself creeping into his room at night and watching him sleep, always with one foot out of the covers and his mouth wide open. And I stroke his little face and kiss his smooth forehead and imagine a time in just a few years from now when he has lost his baby features, when his smooth skin is stubbly and breaking out in spots. And I could cry, I honestly could, because it has just flown by far too quickly.

I can’t remember the day when I realised that he no longer fit in the crook of my arm, or a time when I found I could no longer lift him. I cant remember at which point did he stop playing with his Power Rangers or his wresting figures and declare that he was too old for toys. I don’t remember the day when he stopped calling me Mummy and replaced it with ‘Mum’ or when he stopped holding my hand in public. Because in the blink of an eye my little boy has grown up and I really wasn’t ready for it.

And yet this morning, as I rushed out of bed to catch him before he could leave the house, I grabbed him for a hug and a kiss and told him, as I always do, “I love you”. “I love you too”, he told me, reading every thought in my head, “And you’re still my best friend, okay?”.

And just like that I realised that yes my little boy might be growing up but that doesn’t mean that I’m losing him.

I’m simply letting him go.