There's that piece which stays behind.

Just left my son with a stranger.  Feel like I'm going to make my own Rorschachs on the floor.

Sure he's met her a few times.  Sure it's only to give him lunch, max an hour.  For now.  Sure I will collapse in a heap of relief when I go to pick him up and he's smiling and giggling and burping and shouting just like he does at home.  There may even come a day when he cries when leaving her house.  I will surely burn that day like I'm locked in an oven.  I will surely cheer his independence.  I will surely adore his spirit.  Even more than I do today.

Inhale.

Talking with my NCT pals the other day we were saying how it's a dead certainty that we will have to let the babies go, over and over again all through life.  To childminders, to school, to the grocery store, to teen discos, to gap years.  Now having a child of my own, now about to regularly leave him to get to the business of growing up and mixing more often with other kids than with mommy et al, getting to the business of that next phase of life that doesn't involve me changing the bulk of the nappies, feeding all the vegetable sludge, teaching him to hold the cloth, the spoon, the cup, the bell, the crinklebug.  Well, now I understand what my parents must have felt when I left home.  Left the country.  Got married.  Flying flying and flying away.  All the time flying.  But there's that piece which stays behind.  That piece that is woven into their very souls. 

That one stays behind.

Exhale.

Will I one day pick him up and there he will have learned to sit up by himself at last?  I cannot pretend I will not turn a shade of deepest green for a flash before the pure joy sets in.  But I desperately wanted that one.  I wanted it before I went back to work.  I go back to work tomorrow.

Yes, thank you Sir Mick, yes, I realize you get what you need.  But still.

I haven't loads more to say right now.  That is enough.  That is everything today.  It is such a small thing but it is such a huge day.

Sure.