This boy?

This wee, mop-headed baby boy is gone. With one careless, husband-directed trip to the hair salon, he is no more. He is now boy-boy. Again, only more so this time, so much more – I don’t know – Junior Banker, if Junior Bankers had front comb-overs, which I suppose some of them do:

I don’t think that my heart can stand this, all this change. Am I going to shatter every time that he gets a haircut? Am I going to fall to pieces every time one of his curls hits the floor of a SuperCuts and gets swept away by a hard-bristled broom?

He grows and he grows and he grows and every inch of him changes, every day, and I find myself resisting it, his movement forward, his journey up and out of babyhood, this journey that will take him through boyhood and through adolescence and beyond, ever further away from me, and ugh, this is how it starts, doesn’t it, the inevitable, terrible transformation of a mother into desperate, grasping creature of need, into a woman who cannot let go of her children, who cannot, especially, let go of her son, who wants to keep him clasped to her chest forever, always close, always hers, her baby?

Is this inevitable? Am I doomed to have my heart shattered endlessly? Am I going to turn into a desperate, clingy, salon-averse harpy who hisses at all who would take her child or her locks away from me? Will I be the worst mother-in-law in the history of the world, ever? I AM TERRIFYING MYSELF, GODS HELP ME.