Our kids will bid us farewell

I'm on a train heading back to Toronto after a perfect weekend.

I watch from my window as a mother bids her university son goodbye. Both are trying to be strong and she's definitely doing a great job in holding her tears back. He gives her a hug, turns around and starts to walk towards his train.

You can see she's nervous, pacing herself and walks back to her car then dashes out running back to him to hand him a coffee mug. He's calmly putting it in his luggage under the watchful loving eyes of a mother that has already started missing him.

She takes a step back and starts to walk towards her car. She's looking for him but he's already on the train. Her eyes shield the falls of Niagara. She gets into her car and collapses on the steering wheel.

 

It's moments like these that remind me why my mom and dad refused to send us away for university. I get it.

And I sit here feeling so emotional about the day when I'll be seeing my daughter off to university.

They'll want to experience this new stage in their life and we will need to encourage them to bid us farewell 'till the next time we see them again. But it's getting hard to set them free.

/Thoughts of a mother