Guys and Trucks

My son won a 1959 Ford F100 in May. He has always been a lucky kid and a gear head. I am not sure where that came from. Once the initial joy of being a 17-year-old with a vintage vehicle wore off and the reality of the upkeep and other logistics of having this truck (we named her Jolene, it's kind of a long story) he came to the decision to sell it. 

Here we are almost in October and he is still working on selling it. Today we had another person come to look at it. I watched for a bit from the window. Mostly to get a description of the buyer in case anything goes down.

As I was watching and trying not to hear Keith Morrison narrating a Dateline about this sort of thing a recurrence of thought wandered into my mind. I read a quote once from an author named Elizabeth Stone: 

“Making the decision to have a child - it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

It seems that through all the parts of childhood this quote just rings more and more true. When my children were younger I thought that their need for me would wane. As of yet, I have not found this to be true. Not that either one of them needs me more, but they need me for more complex things. 

I am immensely proud of both of my kids and of the humans that they are becoming. It is a super surreal feeling though to be on the sidelines watching them become independent adults. I genuinely like the people that they are both becoming. I guess onward to the next adventure.

My husband and I have started to look at what is going to come next. We are ready for the next step. When the kids were little it felt like we were going to be their sole source of all things forever. Time has passed so quickly though. While I do miss having them sleep in my arms it is really nice to have a tall kid to reach things for me.

All I really know is that  I am looking forward to seeing them continue to grow, to help them through their big decisions, and to help them through their mistakes and heartbreaks. Hopefully, I've done an alright job by their standards. When it comes time I definitely don't want them to pick one of those retirement homes from W5.

This is Jolene. I decided I had to tell the story of her name. My son has another truck, that we named Dolly Partson. She has a great rack, the boys love her, and she sings when you step on the gas. When he won the truck we decided that he had to be Jolene because she is a red head trying to steal Dolly's man. So there you go.