My boy who is a grown-up 18-year old started a new job yesterday at noon.
When I arrived home from a completely joyful evening with friends of my heart, I found him pale and shaky, holding his left hand, encased in a rubber glove, above the level of his heart.
To leave out all the greusome details feels like cheating, but to add in any of the gruesome details feels… grotesque.
So I will tell you that in his first ten minutes of his first shift, he sliced onions as well as the tip of his thumb.
Which continued to bleed steadily until he got home at 9:25. When I got home at 9:30, I helped him unwrap and wash and salve and redress. And the whole time, I was torn between sorrow that he was hurt and happiness that he let me help him.
Watching him grow, and grow, and grow is magical. He’s my baby. My boy. But he’s also a mannish kind of person, and there is some hurt attached to seeing the end of things. Some wounds around the growing up and growing away and growing different.
I love him. And wounds will continue. And they will heal. And we will love each other.