Letting go

As we near the end of our journey together the knot in my stomach grows tighter. We chat away about all the great things that are in store and I try hard to bury my emotions from view. As the airport gets closer the silence looms louder until one of the boys speaks.

'Are you ok Mummy?'

'Oh I'm fine darling. Just fine'.

But when I look back my poor boy has big crocodile tears streaming down his face.

'I will miss you' he says, and I just like that I feel like I have been dealt the sucker punch. I'm winded.

I don't like being in a different county to my children, let alone a different country, but they are off to England with their Dad for five whole days. Longer than I have ever been apart from them since the first was born eleven years ago.

In fact, years after the birth of each of them there is still an invisible umbilical cord that holds them to me, and the further and longer I am pulled apart from them the harder it yanks at my heart.

It is a fun trip they are going on. A lovely trip, that will be filled with friends and godparents and grandparents. They will get to see where their Dad was born and brought up, and meet relations they have never known.

But.

I worry about them and I worry about me.

At the airport entrance, as I hug and smile and hug some more I fight against the feeling that it isn't right. I know that it will be a great experience for them all and now they are older they can all survive quite happily without me. They are growing up. Becoming independent. But it feels less like they are slipping through my fingers and more like they are being pulled away from me as I desperately try to grab hold of their hands.

I wave them off with a fixed grin on my face, and then I drive back alone listening to sunny tunes and singing back the tears.

Five days to go.