Between Coffee & Curfew

To my boys, for a day I hope is still a lifetime away.

My sweet boys,

There is something about being a mother that nobody can prepare you for.

You spend your days teaching your children how to live without you, while quietly wishing you’ll never have to find out what that looks like.

You teach them to walk, knowing one day they’ll walk away from you. You teach them to speak, knowing one day there will be things they won’t tell you. You teach them to be independent, even though a selfish little part of you wishes they’d need you forever.

And you do all of it knowing that someday, whether you’re ready or not, you’ll have to let go.

I’ve thought about that more than I’d like to admit.

Not because I plan on going anywhere anytime soon. Believe me, I have every intention of sticking around long enough to embarrass you both well into adulthood.

But because life has taught me that tomorrow isn’t promised. And there are things I never want to leave unsaid.

So this is for you.

For the days when you miss me. For the moments when you need your mom and I’m not there. For the years that will pass, the memories that will fade, and all the things I wish I could somehow leave behind.

If one day you forget the sound of my voice, I hope you never forget how much I loved you.

I hope somewhere deep inside you, there’s still a memory of me calling your names. Of me telling you goodnight. Of me saying “Be careful” every time you walked out the door, even when you were old enough to roll your eyes at me.

I hope you remember my laugh. But if you don’t, I hope you remember that I laughed with you.

I hope you remember my hugs. But if you can’t remember exactly how they felt, I hope you remember that you never had to earn them.

And if one day you look at a picture of me and realize you can no longer hear my voice in your head, please don’t cry because you think you’re forgetting me.

Oh, my boys, I hope you never carry that kind of guilt.

Because I didn’t love you so that you would spend the rest of your lives trying to remember every detail of me.

I loved you so that you would always know what it felt like to be loved.

I wish I could take all the love I have for you and put it somewhere safe. Somewhere you could reach for it on the days when life feels unbearable.

I wish I could leave you a thousand hugs, tucked away for the moments when you need one.

I wish I could somehow be there for every heartbreak, every disappointment, every moment when the world makes you question yourselves.

And I wish I could promise that you’ll never have to face any of those things without me.

But I can’t.

And that hurts more than I know how to put into words.

To my oldest, my Bubba,

My first little boy. The one who made me a mother and changed everything I thought I knew about love.

I still remember the feeling of holding you when you were small enough to fit against my chest. That overwhelming realization that this tiny person depended on me for everything.

And now youre sixteen.

Sixteen.

I look at you sometimes and wonder where all those years went. How the little boy who once needed me for everything became this young man who keeps so much of his world to himself.

You’re my quieter one. My private, sensitive boy who doesn’t always let people see what’s going on beneath the surface.

And sometimes that worries me.

Not because there’s anything wrong with who you are, but because I know how deeply a heart like yours can hurt.

I know you’ve already experienced what it feels like to care about someone and have things not work out the way you hoped.

And sweetheart, I know it won’t be the last time life hurts you.

There will be people who walk away. People who make promises they don’t keep. People who make you question whether you were ever as important to them as they were to you.

I wish I could protect you from every single one of them.

I wish I could take every broken piece of your heart into my hands and somehow put it back together before you ever had to feel the pain.

But I know I can’t.

So please, if you remember nothing else I ever told you, remember this.

Someone else’s inability to see your worth does not make you worthless.

Someone deciding you’re not the person they want doesn’t mean you weren’t enough.

It doesn’t mean you should have been different. It doesn’t mean you should have tried harder, loved less, or changed the things that make you who you are.

I spent nine months growing you beneath my heart.

Nine months protecting you before I ever knew your face. Nine months loving every tiny part of someone I hadn’t even met.

And from the moment I held you, that heart of yours became one of the most precious things in my world.

Please don’t let someone who doesn’t know how to love you convince you that it’s something you need to fix.

Don’t let the world make you hard just because you’ve been hurt. Don’t become cold because someone else was careless with your feelings.

And please, sweetheart, stop being so hard on yourself. I wish you could see what I see when I look at you. I don’t see the flaws you probably spend so much time worrying about. I don’t see someone who needs to be louder, tougher, more confident, or more like anyone else.

I see my boy.

I see someone with a beautiful heart, someone who feels deeply, someone who has so much love to give even if he doesn’t always know how to put it into words.

And I see someone who is already enough.

You don’t need to become somebody else to deserve happiness.

One day, I hope someone comes into your life who understands the gift they’ve been given when you choose to love them. Someone who makes you feel safe being exactly who you are. Someone who doesn’t leave you lying awake at night wondering what you did wrong.

And until then, don’t give away pieces of yourself trying to convince the wrong person to stay.

I know there will be times when you’ll need me and won’t know how to say it. I know sometimes you’ll tell me you’re fine when you’re anything but.

And someday, if I’m no longer here, I worry about who you’ll turn to when those feelings become too heavy. Please promise me you’ll let someone in.

Not everyone will understand you, but there will be people who want to. You don’t have to carry everything alone just because you’ve gotten good at hiding it.

And if there comes a day when you feel like you’re not good enough, when someone has broken your heart or the world has made you feel small, I hope you remember the woman who loved you before you ever had a chance to prove yourself to anyone.

I loved you when all you could do was breathe, sleep, and curl your tiny fingers around mine. You didn’t have to earn love then. And you never will.

If I could give you one last thing, sweetheart, it would be the ability to see yourself through my eyes. Because then you’d finally understand just how amazing you have always been.

To my youngest, my Snickerdoodle,

My sweet little shadow.

Oh, how I wish I could freeze time with you.

You’re six years old as I write this, and I swear there are days when I can barely keep up with you.

You’re loud. You’re funny. You’re stubborn. You have an opinion about absolutely everything, and you never seem to run out of things to tell me.

“Mom, watch this!”

I hear those words so many times a day. Sometimes I’m cooking. Sometimes I’m cleaning. Sometimes I’m trying to finish something, and I tell you to wait just a minute.

And I know to you, whatever you’re about to show me is the most important thing in the world.

I wonder if you’ll ever know how much those little moments meant to me. How much I loved hearing your excitement. How much I loved watching you dance, listening to your stories, and seeing your face light up when you discovered something new.

Even on the days when I was tired. Even on the days when I thought I couldn’t possibly answer one more question. I loved being the person you wanted to share your world with. And the thought that one day you won’t need me in quite the same way makes my heart ache.

Because right now, you’re still my little boy. You still need me for things that someday you’ll do without even thinking. You still want my attention, my approval, my hugs, and my help.

You still look at me like I can fix just about anything. And sweetheart, I wish that were true. I wish I could fix everything that will ever hurt you.

I wish I could promise that someday I’ll be sitting in the audience watching you accomplish something you’ve worked so hard for, embarrassing you by crying before anyone else does.

I want to see all of it.

I want to know the man you’ll become.

I want to know whether you’ll still love dancing. Whether you’ll still have that sarcastic little sense of humor. Whether you’ll still be so protective of the people you love. I want to know whether you’ll have children of your own and whether one of them will be just like you.

And if you do, I hope you call me someday, completely exhausted, and tell me you finally understand why I used to say the things I did. I promise I’ll try not to laugh too hard.

But if I don’t get to see all those things, please know that I dreamed about them. I imagined them. I hoped for them with everything in me.

And if there are parts of your childhood you don’t remember, I hope you’ll never mistake that for a lack of love.

You were so little when I wrote these words.

There are things you do right now that you’ll probably forget long before you’re grown. The way you come running to tell me something. The way you make me laugh when I’m trying to be serious. The way you want me to watch every little thing you do. But I want you to know that I noticed. Maybe not perfectly. Maybe not every single time. But I saw you.

I saw that big personality. That stubborn streak. That tender little heart hiding beneath all that attitude. And I loved every bit of it.

Please don’t let growing up take away the things that make you special. Don’t stop dancing because someone might laugh. Don’t stop dreaming because someone tells you your dreams are too big. Don’t stop being kind because the world isn’t always kind in return.

And don’t ever feel like you have to be strong for everyone else. I know even now you want to protect your mom.

But baby, you were never supposed to carry the weight of the world on those little shoulders.

I want you to grow up knowing it’s okay to cry. It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to need someone.

And I hope that when you’re a grown man, you’ll still have that beautiful heart that loves so openly.

One day, you may not remember what it felt like to be six years old and wrapped up in my arms. You may not remember the sound of me laughing at something silly you said. You may not remember how many times I kissed your forehead or how often I watched you sleep, wondering how I got so lucky.

But I will have loved you through every one of those moments. And if I could somehow reach into the future and hold the grown man you’ll become, I’d tell him the same thing I tell the little boy standing in front of me today.

You don’t have to do anything extraordinary to make me proud. You already made my life extraordinary just by being in it.

And to both of you…

There will come a day when you understand that I was never just Mom.

I was a woman who made mistakes. Who worried about money. Who sometimes cried when nobody was watching. Who had dreams of her own and fears she didn’t always share.

There were days I felt like I was failing at everything.

Days I lost my patience. Days I raised my voice. Days I went to bed wondering whether I’d been the mother you deserved. And if there are memories of those days, I’m sorry.

I wish I could go back and be more patient sometimes. I wish I could have worried less about the things that didn’t matter and spent more time soaking up the things that did.

I wish I had understood sooner just how quickly the years would pass. But please know that even on my worst days, there was never a moment when I wished for a life without you.

Not one.

You were never the reason life was difficult.

You were the reason I wanted to make it better.

And I hope that when you’re older, you understand that I didn’t always have the answers. Sometimes I was just a woman trying to raise two good men while figuring out herself.

I hope you’ll forgive the mistakes and remember the love.

And I hope you’ll remember each other.

You have ten years between you, and right now you’re living in two completely different worlds.

But someday, when I’m gone, you’ll share something nobody else will ever understand in quite the same way. You’ll both know what it was like to call me Mom.

You’ll remember different versions of me. You’ll have different stories, different memories, and different moments that meant the most.

Please share them.

Tell each other the stories. Laugh about the ridiculous things I did. Remind each other of the things I used to say. And when one of you is having a hard time, please don’t wait for him to ask for help. Show up.

Because one day, the two of you may be the closest thing each other has to the childhood you shared with me.

And if I could ask one thing of you after I’m gone, it would be this.

Please don’t let missing me keep you from living.

I know there will be moments when you wish I were there. When something wonderful happens and you reach for your phone before remembering I won’t answer. When your heart is broken and you want nothing more than to hear me tell you it’s going to be okay.

When you have children of your own and suddenly find yourself wishing you could ask me a question. I wish I could be there for every one of those moments.

Oh, how I wish I could.

But if I can’t, I hope you still find happiness.

I hope you laugh without feeling guilty. I hope you celebrate birthdays and holidays and all the beautiful things life brings you.

I hope you fall in love. I hope you build lives you’re proud of. I hope you make memories that don’t include me. And I hope you never think that moving forward means leaving me behind. Because loving someone doesn’t end when their life does.

It just becomes something you carry differently.

Someday, you might forget the sound of my footsteps coming down the hallway. You might forget the way I said your names when I was irritated. You might forget the little things I did without even realizing you were watching.

And that’s okay.

I don’t want you to spend your lives afraid of forgetting me.

I want you to remember how safe you felt when you were little. How you could come to me with a scraped knee, a broken heart, or a problem you didn’t know how to solve. I want you to remember that even when I didn’t have the right words, I tried.

Even when I couldn’t fix something, I cared.

Even when we disagreed, I loved you.

And if one day you’re standing in front of a mirror, older than I ever got to see you become, and you wonder whether I’d be proud of the person looking back at you…

I hope you already know the answer. I was proud of you before you could walk. Before you could talk. Before you knew what it meant to accomplish anything at all. I was proud simply to be your mother.

And I still would be.

If I could have one last day with you, I wouldn’t ask for anything extraordinary.

I wouldn’t need a vacation, or a celebration, or some perfect family moment. I’d want an ordinary day. I’d want to hear you talking in the next room. I’d want to make dinner and complain about the dishes. I’d want to hear you laugh at something ridiculous.

I’d want to listen to your stories, even the ones I’d already heard. I’d want to hug you both, not knowing how to let go. And when the day was over, I’d want to tell you goodnight. Just one more time.

Because that’s what I know I’ll miss the most.

Not the big moments. The everyday privelege of being your mom.

So, if one day you forget the sound of my voice, I hope you remember this:

I loved you in a thousand ordinary moments that neither of us knew we were going to miss.

I loved you when you were tiny and needed me for everything. I loved you when you were stubborn and testing my patience. I loved you through every version of yourselves that I was lucky enough to know.

And I would have loved every version that came after.

If I could live a thousand lifetimes, I would find you in every single one.

I would choose the sleepless nights, the worries, the messes, the arguments, the laughter, the hugs, and every beautiful, exhausting moment all over again.

Because you were worth every second.

And when my time here is over, I hope the last thing you ever question is whether you were loved.

You were.

You are.

And in every way a mother’s love can outlast her, you always will be.

And if one day you can’t remember exactly how my voice sounded, I hope somewhere in your heart you can still hear me calling you Bubba and Snickerdoodle.

Because no matter how old you get, how far life takes you, or how many years pass after I’m gone, those will always be the names of the little boys who made my life complete.

Forever your mom. ❤️

Between Coffee & Curfew 🍵❤️