Casey Is Moving Out

July, 2006

Four years ago, I stood on the front porch crying when 18 year old Casey left to join the army.

Today, I watched my veteran son load a Budget rent-a-truck with all of his belongings (and a few of mine) and leave for California.

His enlistment is over, and he's moving out. Really moving out.

Funny, the things you think about when the kid who spent 22 years calling your house home is no longer a kid.

I watched him role his mountain bike out of the shed, and wondered why I ever worried that he would never learn to ride without training wheels.

I can't believe I was concerned when he quit Little League after the first time he was hit by a baseball.

I still remember being anxious because he hated vegetables, loved junk food and because I could count the ribs in his skinny torso when he went shirtless each summer.

I was afraid he'd never learn to talk properly, for crying out loud, and he was only two….

How trivial and unwarranted my concerns, in the big scheme of things. How sad that it took me so long to realize that.

I hope he doesn't remember the times I yelled at him for no good reason. I hope he does remember every soccer game, science fair project, vacation and summer camp.

I helped him pack his high-school-ceramics-class sculptures of animal skeletons and I laughed, remembering my shock, then dread, when I first saw them. All I could see was what appeared to be a morbid fascination with death, and visions of psychotherapy danced through my head. (The ceramics teacher told me he was "brilliant." Obviously, I did not major in art.)

I wonder why I ever thought that he needed to be guided, molded, or altered in any way. In retrospect, I had precious little to do with the man he is today.

And now that the truck is gone, I'm wondering if he remembered his saxophone and if he didn't, why not??

Oh, me. They grow up, they live and love, and create their own lives. They make decisions, good or bad, the same way I did and the same way my parents did and their parents did. After four years of sleeping in sand dunes and humvees, carrying weapons with names too big for my memory and doing his best to make the world a safer place, you'd think my son would certainly have earned full rights to manhood.

I just can't seem to stop being a mom.

~Cindy Lainez, True Story of a Military Mom with Ties in Nebraska (Currently living in Golden, Colorado)