My Son is Getting Married! (A Mother’s Tender-Hearted Reflection)

Last night I dreamt I was embracing my sleeping two-year-old boy in my arms. I felt such serenity as I gazed down at his peaceful, sweet face. My baby is thirty, and in just three days he’ll be married! For weeks and months friends and family ask, “Are you excited?” Of course, I’m excited. But being actively engaged in wedding preparations and living, it took a dream to give me a full pause to take in this momentous occasion.

For years I prayed and envisioned Theo meeting his just right woman. Watching on as his older cousins married and had children, I wanted the same for our boy. He’d date girls for three to six months, but each was right for that moment-in-time only; there were no future possibilities. My mother-heart was heavy. Then, just before Covid-19 hit, he met Sarah on the dating website, Hinge. Boom! That was it. They’d found the love of their life! And my husband, Gus and I could feel it, too. Nine months after they met Sarah moved into Theo’s condo and they began making wedding plans. It’s so good and right, and… my baby’s getting married!

We get to experience the fullness of our emotions and joy when we take a pause. I thank you for sharing this pause with me. My hope is that it will connect you to your emotions to tenderly take in your own transitions.

Our kids getting married—one of the endless transitions we go through as parents and as humans. Our kid’s first step, first word, kindergarten, middle school, high school, drivers license, college, first job, career, marriage, home, children—and that’s just the common transitions.

Today I opened for the first time in a long time, a journal of letters I’ve been writing to Theo since he was born. When he was a baby, I’d write monthly. As he got older it was yearly. And now, it’s less frequently than that. In its pages are my heartfelt recordings of Theo’s momentous moments. I wrote it for him, but I can see it was for me, too. Each pause then and now enables me to savor the experience more fully of my boy at that moment of life.

He always adjusted to his transitions much better than I did. Here’s an entry a few days before move-in-day at Quinnipiac University August 27, 2010:

“I was getting a little emotional saying, ‘My boy isn’t going to be living home anymore’ and you responded, ‘Mom, I’m just doing what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s like when I went to kindergarten. The other kids were crying and clinging to their moms, but I was happy and had to help you to let me go. I’m ready to go now mom, and you’re going to be OK.’”

I’m just doing what I’m supposed to be doing. Out of the mouth of babes. Our children are our greatest teachers. It makes me think of what Kahlil Gibran says in “On Children” from his book, The Prophet.

Your children are not your children.

They come through you, but not from you

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

As my cousin Brenda said to cheer me up after I dropped Theo off at college, “You did your job as a mother well if your kid is ready to move onto the next stage of their life. Sending them off to live their own life is what it’s all about.”

I know my boy-man is ready to get married by the partner he is to Sarah. He puts her first and lavishes her with love and adoring teasing. He is his full Theo-self with her, just as he’s always been with Gus and me, making audacious, clever, frank statements that raise our spirits. That tells me volumes about their connection.  He and she know each other’s strengths and weaker points and embrace it all. They share living responsibilities on all levels and can talk through their different points of view. Most of all they love being together. My mom-heart is so happy my boy is marrying the love of his life.

Gus and I are ready to be the bows for Theo’s arrow. He’s been preparing us. Four years ago, our boy-man bought a condo and moved out. He calls me less. At times I miss the level of closeness we used to have, but with mother-love I rejoice he’s moving on to this next wonderful stage of his life. I’m grateful he’s brought Sarah into our family.  If she wasn’t becoming a daughter to us, I’d pick her as a friend.

Our son, our boy—is getting married!

Have you had similar feelings? I’d love to hear from you about your experiences and any wisdom you have to share.

Want some uplift? My book is available on Amazon.

Don’t Wait to Express Your Love

Do you sometimes hold back expressing your love waiting for the other person to say it first? Here’s a story to inspire you to be bold and say it now!

Several weeks ago, my husband Gus and I watched a segment on CBS Sunday Morning with author Trent Preszler. It was so touching we both teared up, and here I am writing about it. Preszler wrote a memoir, Little and Often, about the never expressed feelings between him and his dad, and its profound impact on his life.

The Impact of Unexpressed Love

Preszler describes his dad, a Viet Nam Vet and a former rodeo champion, as living a hardscrabble life in South Dakota. And the hardest thing about that was that his dad never once in his life said he loved him.

"I wanted him to say it so badly. And I felt like if I was the first one to say, 'I love you,' that somehow it would be worthless."

In his 20’s Preszler told his father he was gay. They were estranged for the next 10 years, till his dad was on his death bed dying of cancer. Even then, sitting by his hospital bed, no love was expressed by either of the Preszler men. He hoped his dad’s last words would be I love you, but they were, “Drive safely!”

Take a Risk and Express Your Heart

My dad was a little like Preszler’s dad. Growing up in the 30’s and 40’s, he was of the generation when men were expected to be strong, providers, and didn’t express their feelings. That was hard for me. My parents divorced when I was in college, and I longed for confirmation after he remarried that he still loved me. Though I would hug him at the end of each visit and tell him with sincerity “Love you, Dad,” his only response was, “Right.” That single word left me cold and feeling disconnected from him. I finally got my wish, about a year before he passed away at 89.

When my stepmother was disabled and couldn’t make the 10-hour train ride to visit us, my dad came on his own. He seemed freer and talked more openly during these visits. At night before he’d go up to bed, I’d hug him and say, “I love you so much, Dad.” The first couple of nights he’d respond with his usual, “Right.” One night I said, “What does right mean?” He laughed and said, “Love you too, Dear.“ Deep fulfillment flooded my chest. Finally, the words I’d longed to hear for so long!

It does feel risky and vulnerable when we express our feelings and are unsure of how the other will respond. But what’s the alternative? Keeping our love locked up for fear of rejection? Even when my dad, merely responded, “Right,” I felt empowered expressing my true feelings for him. Who have you been wanting to express your feelings to but have held back?

A Way to Get Started

Preszler says with deep regret “I wish I had told my dad I loved him and thanked him for all the lessons he taught me.”

Saying ‘I love you’ can begin with words of appreciation. There’s so much underlying the words ‘I love you.’ It’s all the qualities we value and admire in the other person. It’s the way they treat us and make us feel. It’s the support they give us. It’s how our life feels richer and blessed because they’re in it.

In my book, The Affirming Way of Life: See the Good, Speak the Good, Spread the Good, I show a myriad of ways to get in touch with your positive feelings towards others and then to express them.

The simplest way is to be specific and sincere. When we’re specific we give the person a word gift, something to hold onto that shows them how they’re valued and builds our bonds with them. Sincerity is of the heart. What comes from the heart reaches the heart.

Here’s what specific and sincere appreciating looks like: During my dad’s last visits, we sat on the white microfiber couch in my living room, and he’d talk about his favorite Broadway musical composers. I admired his passion for music and was so grateful for how it enriched my life. So I said:

“Dad, my life is so much richer because of all the music you’ve shared with me. I still sing verses from the musicals you played as I went to sleep as a kid. I so admire your passion for music. You inspire me to follow my own passions.” My words wove tiny threads of love between our hearts.

Make Expressing Your Heart a Lifestyle

Preszler ended his interview by saying, “I’ve learned extraordinary things can happen if we do little things every day.”

Make each day extraordinary by expressing your love and appreciation to your loved ones. Unleash your positive possibilities!

Gail’s book makes a perfect gift for someone wanting more positivity in their life. It’s also a great summer read! She is a life coach. Visit her website uppcoach.com to learn more and contact her.



Taking Notes: A Love Story

I’m honored to share a guest post by my son Theo’s favorite high school English teacher, Jason Armstrong. His blogs at his website WriteOnFightOn, take my breath away. Jason, a youngish father of three and a passionate writer, is living with Cerebellar Ataxia, a degenerative disease that impacts motor skills, coordination, vision and balance. I mention the disease, because with vulnerability and humor he puts on the page what it means to be challenged and human. After each of his posts I come away feeling deeply touched and more real. Read on and see for yourself.

In a world with Nicholas Sparks it's hard to write something original about love.

Love is a well-traveled topic. One, I'm sure, you've taken plenty of notes on.

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is engraved your heart and scrolled among the stars.

Love is in air. Love is an open door. And, if you find the right station, love is a battlefield.

Anytime you write about love you ink a fine line between cliche' and Nicholas Sparks. So, in my attempt to avoid such fate, the only thing I can offer is a secret love story about love. So secret that when my wife reads this, she will know it for the first time.

I've written about my health issues and personal shame and failure but writing about love is something I've avoided. For me, writing about love is a little embarrassing. A little too revealing.

And plus, how do I write about love in such an authentic yet impenetrable way that it's not the subject of dissection, comparison and judgment?

Truth is-- you can't.

It's simple emotional physics (which should've totally been a 90's emo band name).

To love is to want. And to want is to have weakness. Therefore, you can't open yourself to love without subjecting yourself to dissection, comparison and judgment.

I fell in love with a girl when I was 16.

The first time I saw her standing in the blue painted threshold of the doorway to her biology class I just knew, with an absolute bone-certainty that I would marry her one day.

And 10 years later I did.

Even though that story is absolutely true, I understand you're skepticism. And I don't blame you.  It seems too easy and yet, at the same time, too impossible. Too Nicholas Sparks.

So I'll tell you another story that's more believable. Yet, in some ways, just as fantastical.

Cindy and I are sitting at large round table, the kind guests sit around at weddings. We're in the back of a Las Vegas hotel ballroom, the kind couples rent for weddings.

Except instead of a DJ, there's a UCLA professor at the far end of the ballroom. He's standing on a stage, behind a podium. To his right is a movie screen holding an MRI of a human brain. A brain whose cerebellum is damaged. A cerebellum that looks a lot like mine.

The room is filled with people of all ages. Some people in wheelchairs. Some people clutching canes and walking sticks. The same haunted glow in everyone's eyes.

We're in Las Vegas attending the National Ataxia Federation's annual conference for patients with neurological disease because seven months earlier I was diagnosed with cerebellar atrophy.

Cindy and I are surrounded by people of all ages stricken with rare neurological diseases. ALS. MS. Huntington's Disease. Brain tumors.

Some people sit with their spouse. Some sit their parents. Some sit alone.

The UCLA professor is discussing advancements in stem cell research as a way of improving and repairing brain growth.

Cindy is beside me taking notes.

Her hand moves in small yet amazing ways. She is writing down what the professor is saying as fast as he is saying it.

Her penmanship is catholic school perfect. Her notes are well-spaced and organized and her margins are aligned.

It was a secret moment in my history. One I've never told Cindy about.

A moment of enormous fear yet as my eyes trace the ink-curls of her words, a small moment of enormous comfort and safety.  A moment where love was learned. A moment when I finally realized I was lucky enough to find a woman who cared more for me than I could possibly care for myself.

A moment that gifted me the eventual courage to roll my shoulders and write these sentences--

Let my cerebellum soften to oatmeal. Let my brain cells explode. Let my eyes go blind. Because there's a girl with green eyes standing in the blue doorway and she's not moving. And she never will.

And that is what love becomes. After all the romance and celestial promises of the initial courtship, love becomes a lifetime of small moments that add up to make something enormous.

But even that seems Sparksian.

A chronically sick man whose hands are shaking, whose body aches, whose teetering on the edge of self-destruction is sitting beside his wife in a Las Vegas ballroom. They're high school sweethearts. They have three children together. But seven months ago things suddenly got harder.

And yet she still takes notes.

As the professor speaks and the damaged brain that holds the screen looms like a thundercloud over the room, with her free hand, she reaches across the table to hold his hand, to ease him, to feel his pain.

Jay is a published author, an award-winning teacher, and speaker. He believes in the power of storytelling and that life favors the brave. You can contact Jay and read more of his writings on his blog writeonfighton. org.