Rest comes easily now. Finally, after all these years, the dreams are sweet.
This weekend, I met a new someone deep down in the valley sleep. He was a young man with red-blonde hair and a curious, distracted gaze. He clutched a hardcover book. Maybe he is Bug in 20 years, maybe the whisper of a companion I will someday greet. Maybe he is just that friend of mine I am learning to be.
We sat near each other on a deck built over a creek and the water burbled just beneath our feet. He opened the and the corner of it touched my knee but he was too absorbed to remember to turn it towards me. We spoke our breathless dance about a text neither of us quite understood. I let my fingertips fall on the back of his hand where it grazed the page. He did not reach back for me. I was happy regardless. He turned the page. We talked on.
Proximity can sate hunger. So, it seems, can distance.
I woke up smiling even though he was gone.
That day, Bug flew west with his dad. Tee has called three times and posted 222 photos on our sharing site.
“Hey, you want to talk to your mom? Tell her what we saw on the ferry?”
I hear the little voice of my first and only child trailing off against bluster and wave. “No! You tell her!”
Tee chides to no avail. The little boy has scraped the underbelly of the sky from the glass bubble atop the Space Needle. He has seen some mummified horror inside Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe. He has fed the gulls his extra french fries. What does he need with me?
My son is with his other grandmother, his Baba, his daddy. In one photo, he wears a winter coat in the drizzling gray and balances on a slick log. His arms are stretched wide. The briny waters of Puget Sound lap at his feet.
He has no interest in speaking to me. He does not remember I exist. His circle is strong and he does not need my comfort. Every day, my boy (my lovely one!) grows to belong to the world.
Proximity is sweet, but distance is a trust fall. It is the feel of sky carrying you where only it can.
The universe holds my love. I release him.
I go to bed smiling even though he is gone.
Shannon E. Williams 
Beautiful. Heartbreaking and heart-filling at the same time. Isn’t this what we do? We love them up and expend so much energy making sure we encourage independence and self confidence so that they can go out do it all without us? You have done your job, Mom. He is happy and self assured, with other people who love him. Rest well.