Boys To Men

Facebook showed me some pictures the other day of former students of mine who just graduated high school.  This, of course, pains me, because they were my students when they were in junior high (before my oldest was even born! *sob*) and now they are off to college and the world of adulthood.  Ie. I. am. so. old.

However, what struck me the most about these pictures were the boys.  Or, actually, I should say, the men.

The girls look essentially the same as when they sat in my classroom - a little older, for sure, but in terms of facial features and such, nearly identical.  Puberty for girls starts so much earlier or finishes sooner or something and it seems like apart from haircuts and style of dress, junior high on through later looks alike.

But the boys!  Two of them I literally did not know who they were.  Kids who I saw for endless hours for over two years, out of school at Mass and around town and they were hard to recognize.  One I only noticed who it was by the tag on the photo.

They weren't boys anymore, poised on the awkward, sometimes scrawny, edge of the teen years, halfway between childhood and young adulthood.

They looked like men.  Grown-up adult males.

Now of course, I'm speaking of eighteen year olds and these young fellows would be the first to admit that life and the Holy Spirit has much to teach them in terms of wisdom and knowledge and experience.

But in their bodies, they were all grownup.  And, oh my heart strings.  Because my mind jumped to my own sweet little bouncing monkeys, full of baby chub and rounded cheeks and smooth hairless skin and I thought:

Oh NO! One day, MY boys will be men.

Somehow, on some level, this has failed to occur to me in the past nearly five years.

And would I even recognize them?  Should the now me have a peek at a high school or college graduation picture fifteen to twenty years in the future, would I know them?  My babies who I grew and birthed and loved will grow into someone so utterly apart from myself.

Cue 36.5 week pregnant tears.

I recently finished Hallie Lord's Style, Sex and Substance (mustread. MUST), and I loved Simcha Fischer's chapter on motherhood - she talked about how it is the ultimate act of letting go.  Every moment from birth and beyond is about pushing them out - out of our wombs, out of our arms, out of our nests.

Pope Pius (XII?) said that "Every mother is like Moses. She will not enter the Promised Land. She prepares a world that she will not see."

Sigh.  An honor and a privilege for sure.  A joy, most definitely.  But oh, so bitter, bittersweet.