The Sighs of Growing

Am I the only one?
I’m rather sure I’m not.
I couldn’t be.

Tell me that I’m not the only one.

Who doesn’t exhale when I drop off my kids. But inhales, a rather sharp intake of breath

Like something is piercing me inside, no matter how much I expect it. A reflex of sorts, like a pull on my soul’s inner heart strings. A feeling I cannot fully define or certainly deny.
No matter how hard I try.

Even when I know it’s good.
Even when I know we both have things to see. Places to go. Tasks to complete. People to love. People to become.

These children of mine. They are not “mine”. But they certainly have my heart. In undefinable ways, they don’t just have my heart. They take a piece of it with them. Everywhere they go.

And I feel it, as it stretch just so.
Places I can’t go.
I feel myself expand, deflate, and grow.

Like my insides not so long ago to make room for them. That was just the beginning.

And so now does my heart.

I know how this goes. I know it’s all in preparation for greater distances and greater destinies for both of us.

We must keep growing. Or we’ll never know. Where were meant to go, on this hot air balloon ride. This journey of life.

But my heart will never not rise to go with them.
Stretch just so.
Tuck itself in.
With the kiss that I placed on their cheek.
Or the note that I sent in their packs.
Or the words that I whispered at waking time.

“We love you we love you we love you.”

Together or apart.
We will grow and stretch and expand.

When you go, child, it is not a relief or an exhale of any real stress. No not at all.
It is a sigh. A stretching.

So that when you do come back I have room to love your expanding self more, too.
Room to grow and expand in being myself, too.

It goes on and on.
All of this growing.

Rising to meet.
Stretching to the breeze.
Bending toward the sky.
Chasing down the sun.
Bringing it all, too.

Growing to expand our hearts.
Together or apart.
We’re growing, together, in love.

That’s what it’s gotta be. That thing that I feel. A very stretching, swelling, and soaring kind of love.