The difficult thing for me is that as he's grown up he's drifted away as well.
From being the tiny baby who we didn't know whether he was going to even live past the age of 8 months (dodgy plumbing in his heart...) through to all the Asperger's connotations, I've been the one closest to him. My arm stretched out to catch before he even knew he was about to fall, I would grab him a jumper 2 minutes before he came to tell me he was cold, I could answer his question before he even asked it. I was linked to him so closely that sometimes I couldn't tell where I finished and he started.
Being an aspie meant that life has been a bit of a mine field but somehow I knew just where to step so those bombs didn't explode and 9 times out of 10 I could soothe the savage beasts that took hold of him when his life became just too much.
But he's finally reached the teenage years :) even though chronologically he's been there for quite a while and that closeness is dissipating too quickly for me, it's like trying to grab hold of handfuls of smoke - it just slips through my fingers.
I am beyond thrilled that he is now reaching out to other family members and currently his big sis is being super fantabulous and I find them just hanging out together - I love this!! He talks and she listens and he engages. After so many years of him not being interested in being a part of something he is now emerging like a butterfly from it's cocoon, smelling the sweet air and tasting the dew on his tongue.
But it is still a wrench for me, this new stage in his life... I find myself being snapped at for doing something, that 6 months ago, would have been welcomed. Or I get the teenage look of doom for saying something that is inevitably the wrong thing at the wrong time. Hence the heartache, I'm losing him in a way but gaining him at the same time, gone are the days of watching Thomas the Tank Engine and in are the conversations sat around the fire pit about how to facilitate time travel... Yes, really.
It's not easy having teens but at the same time it's sooo exciting watching them grow. The mothering gene should have an 'opt out' switch for these kind of murky waters when it hurts.
As I said to someone recently - parenting hits you with the full 360 of emotions and generally speaking, all within an hour!
So, now I'm looking at the big world with my own eyes, not through the eyes of my children or husband or even dogs... Trying to find my place in it is going to be tough, I think.
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