Today we were all walking home from shul. KoD was walking with his two daughters, and my little Chatterbox was holding my hand. The rest of the brood were ambling along at their own pace, doing their own thing, which was cool. My big strapping 14 year old son caught up with me, and for the first time in a long time he held my hand. Now, don’t go thinking I asked him to. I did not. I know that to a 14 year old boy it is so not cool a lot of the time to admit you have a mother, let alone walk next to her in public. I stopped kissing his cheek and hugging him publicly after his barmitzvah. So I was surprised when he put his hand in mine. (That makes it sound like his hand is smaller than mine. He has huge hands, and mine was lost in his!!)
It may have been a simple action, but it meant so much to me. He wasn’t ashamed to be proud of his mother, even in front of his new friends. Actions do speak louder than words.
In the Pink 
That’s awesome. 🙂
That’s very nice. My 10 year old daughter won’t hold hands anymore!
Now that is an awesome thing! Just goes to show what a good job his Ima is doing! Ive told my 13yo quite often, even though he is much bigger and taller than me, he will always be my little boy. And everytime I still get a hug and kiss on the cheek, I see the tiny little one, not the young man that actually stands by me now….
Coincidentally, I read this excerpt from “From Ghetto to Ghetto,” the autobiography of Ernest H. Adams, over the Sabbath. Adams is an African-American convert to Judaism who lived through the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He was a college student and referred to himself as a “Black man” when his mother called him “Boy” and he objected. His mother replied: “I gave birth to you; I brought you into this world; you are my son, no one else’s son; you were my boy when you were born; you were my boy when I changed your diapers, when I fed you, took you to school; when you were sick, I took you to the doctor, you were my boy; you were my boy when I raised you; you were my boy when you left home today; you were my boy when you came back; you are my boy now; you will be my boy when I die; you will be my boy when you die.”
❤ That's really sweet. I live for those moments with my kids. They make it all worthwhile.
Must be the neighborhood that is bringing about this behavior 😉
No matter how old the child is, he/she will always be the child of his/her parents. I am 54 years old and, thank G-d, I still have my parents (91 and 87). You know that they still worry about me.
lovely post, lovely moment! my kids are small yet (6, 4 and 19 months) but i often think about those oh-too-soon years when it will be embarrassing instead of wonderful (to them) to be with me. it’s nice to hear about warm moments like these; they give me hope, thanks! 🙂