(I can’t control time, but I can fill it with life. Because sometimes, one whole day can be enough to make a goodbye a little less painful)
On Friday, my eldest son was going to spend the long weekend with his dad. The week before, he had already slept at his dad’s on Monday and Tuesday. He stayed with me on Wednesday and Thursday. And on Friday, before he left, I surprised him. I stayed home with him. Just the two of us. We built Lego. We played football as if there were no tomorrow. We watched cartoons. We did a puzzle. We went for a walk. And we went out for lunch.
He had been asking me for a long time to go for lunch at a pizzeria. But, logistically, it had never been possible. This time, it was just the two of us. So I asked him: “Do you want to go to the pizzeria?”
He immediately said yes. We got ready and left the house. We went to a pizzeria here on our street. But when we got there, he looked at me and told me that wasn’t the one he liked going to. He liked another one. I asked him which one. “Come on. I’ll show you,” he replied. And off he went, showing me the way. To another pizzeria, also nearby, where we had never been before.
“It’s here, Mum. Whenever we walk past here, it smells so good and I wanted to eat here”
They asked us whether we wanted to sit inside or outside.
“Inside” he replied. Immediately.
“Why?” I asked him.
“Because it smells better. It smells really good”.
And that was that. We went inside. We ordered our pizzas. The plates arrived, along with some drawings and pencils to colour in. We had lunch. We talked. We coloured. Then we went to another café for an ice cream. Just the two of us. No rush. No schedules. No one else. Just us.
At the end of the day, his dad came to pick him up. And he cried. I was sitting on the sofa and he sat down next to me, holding on to me. He said he didn’t want to go. That he wanted to stay with me. And he kept repeating: “Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.”
But this time it was different. This time, it didn’t hurt as much as it had before. Not because it was any easier to watch him leave. Not because I didn’t want him to stay. But because that day, we had had a whole day together. One of those days I had needed for such a long time. One of those days that doesn’t feel like it’s been cut in half. That isn’t made up of rushing, handovers, schedules, packing bags, thinking about the next day. One whole day that was just ours.
And perhaps that is what I am learning. That I can’t always choose how much time I get to have with my children. But I can choose what I do with the time I have. I can make the most of a morning. I can accept an invitation to have lunch at a pizzeria. I can follow my son down a street I had never really noticed and discover that he already knew exactly where he wanted to go. I can sit inside a restaurant because “it smells better”. I can colour drawings. Eat an ice cream. Play football. Build Lego. Laugh. Stay. Be there. And keep it. Keep all of it.
Because there are days when goodbye always comes too quickly. And there are others when, when it comes, we think: Thank goodness. Thank goodness we had this today. Thank goodness there was time. Thank goodness it was just the two of us. Thank goodness that, this time, when he cried because he didn’t want to leave, I didn’t only feel how much I was going to miss him. I also felt certain that we had made the most of our time. And that made a difference.
Because I knew he was going to have a good weekend. I knew he would have fun. I knew he would be okay. And I had that day. Our pizzeria. The smell he had chosen. The drawings. The ice cream. The Lego scattered across the living room. The balls on the floor. The questions. The laughter. The little things that, in the middle of a life that so often feels divided into pieces, were just ours.
Maybe I can’t stop him from missing me. Maybe I can’t stop him from crying when his dad comes to pick him up. Maybe I can’t make every day ours. But I can try to make sure that the days that are ours have everything. And that day, they did. When he walked out the door, I stood there watching him. And, for the first time in a long time, goodbye didn’t take everything away. It left me with one whole day. And, in that moment, that was enough.
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