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right,” I said. “We should have talked.”
Lonny tried to hug me, but I pulled
away. He understood that taking down
the swing set was hard for me. Maybe
it was hard for him too. But a mama’s
soul is different ground, and
this meant the end of an era.
Change was happening and
would continue fast and hard.
I followed the path that cut
through the side yard to get a
better look at the destruction.
The sight of the discarded
wood planks made my hands
close tight. “How could you?” I
whispered.
As frustrated as I was with
my men for not letting me in on
this project, the true, deep frus-
tration was with myself. How
many times would I fall into
this same chasm? I thought I’d
learned to deal with the chil-
dren growing up—with a fair
amount of strength and grace
even. After all, my oldest was
in law school. My next was well
on his way out of the nest too.
I’d set my boys free to go to a
public school after years of
home teaching. Yet here I was
again. Wanting to freeze time,
to box and store the days as if
there were no expiration date
on their childhoods.
The swing set had come to
us on the back of a flatbed truck more
than a decade ago, when my older sons
were 12, 9 and 2. We’d just moved from
a tiny cottage to an old Victorian, and
the wooden play set was the first thingBOYS TO MEN Shawnelle with
her sons (from left), Gabriel,
Samuel, Isaiah, Grant and Logan