We talked or texted most everyday - but especially on Sundays.
She would call or I would call. We would catch up on the weekend fun and talk about what the coming week held. If she had come home for the weekend, Sunday was all about what I would cook for her to take back to school with her. I used to cook for the week every Sunday.
I cooked today. I hoped to send the no-bakes back to Arkansas with Aubrey, but I didn't start earlier enough. I made Asian-chicken for Joey's lunch and some yummy blueberry banana bread. Yesterday, Wade asked for skillet queso and stuffed turkey sliders. To be needed, felt warm, felt welcoming. He's had the flu, so I have been willingly at his beck and call - even if that means I will have a month of reminding him he is capable of working the oven himself. I enjoyed being the mom with the answers and a way to make him feel better.
Each day that goes by perplexes me as I am confused how life and beauty can still go on. I resent the mark time has left on my heart, and I have a love/hate relationship with the college inquiries that arrive daily for Wade. It's as if life is mocking me now that my ears can hear the world rushing by - "We will take him, too. It's just a matter of time."
Time.
In time we will heal; we will find reason to smile and remember and laugh. We will have defined our days without Taylor, and then... Wade will leave to make his way.
It's our job as parents to prepare our kids for that time when they will leave, when they will begin to chase their own dreams and make good on the promises we mothers whispered into their ears in the darkest hours of the night. Years later when we wake because the absent sound of our children's footfalls creates a silence dismantling sleep, we will say the same prayers for protection and blessing. Our hearts will weep with simultaneous pride and pain, because they are only given to us so we can give them away.
We will get Wade ready; we will prepare his heart and mind; we will pray over him. He, like the sister he adores, will make his mark, and we will marvel at what we were given. He is #strongandcourageous.
But Sundays... I brought her home from the hospital on a Sunday, and early on a Sunday morning in July, I knew I would give her away.
Sending a child to college is a natural evolution - sending a child to heaven ......
#golighttheworld baby girl Your mama loves you.