growing up

My little boy has started calling me "mom" this week. He's started calling Ben "dad." It's sweet in it's own way but my heart is a little bit sad for the baby voice calling "mama" that is fading away.

"What mama? What mama?" he's been asking when I call him, careful to pronounce each and every syllable. He's two years old and already I'm waxing nostalgic. The sweet stages of his life are just slipping through my fingers faster than I can hold onto them and I while I love each simple moment, I know they're going fast.

As my children are wont to do when they are two, my son loves to be pushed on the swing. His ever evolving language has started to move past the simple command of "wing!" to "I wanna wing!" and on days like today, I'm happy to oblige. There are three swings on our piddly swing set and like Goldilocks, he tries one for a few minutes and then moves to the next, trying them all out or, perhaps smartly getting the most out of his swinging session.

Standing behind him, enjoying the sun, watching the wind rustling the leaves of our tall trees I realize I'm only practicing. There is an art to pushing your child on their swing; push too early and you interrupt the flow, push too late and the connection gets missed, with little or no energy passed on to help propel him outward and upward.

"What mom? What?"

As much as I think I'd like to keep my little boy near me my job is to do just that--the perfect push outward and upward, not too early and not too late, the comfort of my hand on his back sending him off to where he will go, surely, easily, somewhere to "wing". The comfort with swinging is that they always come back.

Photograph by Sarah Cartwright; found here.