In last week's column I expressed frustration about being home with the kids this summer and garnered advice from older parents whose kids are now grown. They told me that although things seem "tiring" (their word, not mine -- I would have chosen something stronger) right now, the boys' childhood will pass quicker than I expected. 

It didn't seem that way last Saturday when Dustin and I took the boys to a high school baseball game. The stadium is just a few blocks from our house, so we walked. Well, Dustin and I walked. Ford rode his bike (the one he can't get started by himself), Owen rode his Big Wheel (the one that requires a push every few feet), and just to fit in, Lindell took his push-cart (the one he used when learning to walk). By the time we got to the field, Dustin and I were responsible for carrying all three forms of transportation, and we alternated duty with Lindell on our shoulders.  

It seemed as if our three young boys were a tornado between us. In fact, I don't remember talking to Dustin at all during the game. We were too busy chasing kids. Afterward, we had plans to take the boys for ice cream, but once we dragged the bike, Big Wheel and push-cart home and broke up a few fights along the way, we were too tired to think about it. The boys, of course, went about their business wrestling in the backyard. They came inside only occasionally to say, "He hit me!" "He looked at me funny," or "He took my baseball bat."   

The next day, we took the boys to church. It was a special service honoring local graduates, and three high school seniors gave the sermon. Two of the seniors were males. Stuck in the space between being a boy and a grown man, they had broad but skinny shoulders, smooth faces, long arms and legs, and voices that sometimes cracked. At once they seemed like someone's baby, and then I saw glimpses of the men they are becoming.  

There was a time when I would have identified with the seniors on stage. But on Sunday, I identified with the seniors' mothers. Could those mothers remember days like the one we'd just had at the ballpark? Did it seem like only yesterday to them? Now that their boys were grown, had the mothers finally gotten all the stains out of their furniture and the smell of dirty socks and shoes out the closets? Did they have Play-Doh in their cabinets? Was dried-up syrup smeared beneath the kitchen table? How long had it been since they changed a diaper? Put a Band-Aid on a knee?  

When was the last time those long, lanky boys with Adam's apples curled into the side of their mother and laid their head on her shoulder? 

The children in the congregation were excused for Sunday School. I walked Ford and Owen to their classroom, and on the way back into the sanctuary, climbed a set of stairs. Purely by reflex, I put out my right palm, as if to catch the hand of a toddler and help them up the steps. For almost a decade, a pudgy hand has reached up for mine at every flight of stairs or to cross the street. For almost a decade, there has been no me without them. But on this day, there was no one to help. 

Not knowing what else to do with my hands, I tucked them into my pockets, only removing them to wipe away a small tear before I took my seat in the sanctuary again. 

At the baseball game on Saturday, I sat for a moment behind my oldest boys as they knelt down on the concrete and pressed their faces to the chain link fence to get a better look at the game. They desperately wanted to catch a foul ball. For all their new long, awkward legs and knobby knees, Ford and Owen looked like babies in the shadows of the young men on the field. They watched with their mouths held open in perfect "Os."

One of the players on deck noticed my boys watching him from above. He turned around and smiled, then gave them a quick thumbs up. Later he passed them a ball through the fence.

Yes, someday my boys will be all grown up. I'll be somewhere in the stands or the pew, alone with my peace and quiet, and feeling sad because I don't have a bike to push home. Maybe I won't even remember the last time I kissed a bruised knee. But if my boys grow up to be the kind of young men who turn around and smile at two little kids in the stands, it all will have been worth it. And when they have their own little "tornadoes," I will smile and laugh, because I get to send those back home to their mother.

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