Graduating to the Next Level by Stacy Hoff

This week we celebrated both of my boys’ graduations—my younger son from elementary school and my older boy from middle school. Despite all the cake,  I find the milestone bittersweet. It is odd, and surprisingly hard, for me to close these chapters in my boys’ childhoods. I am left with the sense that I am no longer a mom to young boys; they are quickly becoming young men.

  

For the longest time, despite their rapid growth, I have held on to the belief that my kids are still little. But my fourteen year old is now six feet tall. I’m only five-foot-four. It’s getting harder and harder for me to deny his maturity. Especially when he has to look down to speak to me at eye level. Or when he carries me around the house with ease because he thinks it’s funny.

I used to lord over him, darn it!

I take solace in the fact that although this chapter in their lives may be ending, their story is just beginning. With each mile marker my children pass, they get closer and closer to living out their own dreams and ambitions. To achieving their own happiness. It’s a wonderful process for them, even if it’s a little sad for me.

I am wrapping up a new novel now. I am preparing to say good-bye to the characters I have given life to, cheered for, and struggled with. They have achieved their HEA (“happy ever after”) and it is soon time for me to move on. The closing of their chapters will be bittersweet for me, too.

I am always grateful to spend time with those I’ve created. Both in real life and in fiction. Once I’ve set their story up, they don’t need me to continue writing it because their story eventually becomes their own.

There’s never a tissue around when I need it.

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