14

My son turned 14 last week. He is taller than me and has a little bit of mesa and thinks he is a big man now.

 I learned so much from him the past one year. The biggest lesson  I learned happened when he was helping me hang the laundry. The truth is, I hate hanging laundry to dry. Because I live in Sunny Queensland and am environmentally friendly, I don’t use the clothes drier and that means laundry is a really big chore. That particular day only my son was home and I asked him to help me with the laundry. He came huffing and puffing, clearly letting me know how unhappy he was. I got really mad and told him off. It was not like I asked him to plough the field and milk the cow before sun up.

He looked at me and said ” mom, you asked for my help and I am helping you. My whinging and whining is part of me helping you and you just have to live with it. You can’t demand that I must hang the laundry with a smile on my face. At the end of the day what matters is that I helped you when you asked for my help not how my face looked when I helped you”

I had to agree with him. Why must I get mad at him because he was whinging and whining when he is doing the work?

I eagerly waited for his 14 th birthday to give him the book I kept with me for the past 25 years. I read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse 25 years ago and it was one of the few books I didn’t give away after reading. I hoped one day I would have a son and I will give it to him. I felt 14 is a good age to read Siddhartha as my son is now transitioning in to adulthood and I want him to understand that his life is a journey and he needs to know what he is looking for. I will never forget reading this.. When someone seeks,” said Siddhartha, “then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.”

When my children were little, motherhood was all about the ‘first’ mile stones they achieved in their life and now they have very few ‘first’ mile stones left to achieve. I have very few things left in my treasure chest that I collected over the years to give my children. I am terrified of the emptiness that awaits me when they all leave home…but for now, I still have them and cherish I will..every little memory..

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