I have felt my heart burst many times. One of the first was when Colin crawled for the first time. He crawled and I felt so excited for him, then a sudden overwhelming surge of doom: he was crawling away from me. The thought took my breath away. I cannot protect him always- but why would I want to stop him from experiencing all that he can?
That was years ago, but I just felt a similar expanding in my chest. We are on a visit to Barcelona, scouting a potential neighborhood. My boys are on a plaza, playing together while we wait for lunch to arrive.
They’ve started using their soccer ball as a basketball, and two boys near them do the same. Mine gather their courage and ask, in Spanish, “Do you want to play?” A lot of hand gestures and charades follow, but they seem to get their ideas across. They spend over an hour playing.
My heart bursts with pride because I don’t think I would’ve had the courage to do that at their age. By now I am fluent in the universal language of boys, and I am cracking up because boy language involves getting hit in the nuts and overreacting for laughs. They later say to us, “I can’t wait until I’m fluent and we can talk!” That’s all the encouragement they need.
Of course I have to let them become who they were always meant to be. As Khalil Gibran said, “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you, but not from you. And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.”
As much as I’m desperate to hold onto their little selves, I’ve known from the very beginning that motherhood is simply a long process of letting go.
Maggie by the Mediterranean 
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