You're Gonna Like The Way You Look......

As I stood next to my teenager tonight in "the" place to rent tuxedos this prom season, I caught myself watching how other moms were handling this milestone in their sons' lives.  Each of the boys was clueless, that was a given. But it was the moms I found myself studying. You could almost guarantee which moms had done this before a time or two, which ones were walking this path with their final babies, and which ones were trying to wade through this quicksand for the first time.

Had anyone warned them? I wondered. Warned them about how amazingly difficult it was going to be to watch their babies morph into young men?  Something happens to a boy when he puts a tuxedo on for the first time. Your son can wear all of the grown up clothes in the world, never shave his face at all so that he ends up looking like Wolverine if you catch sight of him out of the corner of your eye, date different girls and give out all the goodnight doorstep kisses ever imagined; but when he shrugs on that jacket......suddenly, he's gone from this:

To this:

And you find yourself standing in the middle of the tuxedo rental department, watching a trained salesperson measure your son's neck, chest and arms; helping him pick the perfect shade of silver vest to match the accents in her dress; with big 'ole crocodile tears in your eyes.

I miss my baby. But I adore the young man he's turned into.




Hosted by Cecily and Mamarazzi