Today was a day I don’t want to forget.

It’s been a summer of navigating a new way of living. What is our new social normal. What is within our comfort zone.

My son’s baseball practices and games being one of the things that has given us an excuse to be outside for long summer days and electric summer nights under the lights. I watch as my son plays this sport he loves so intensely, and my husband puts his heart into coaching our son’s team. I’m not sure who is having more fun. He is his dad’s son, and their passion for baseball falls into step like one heart beating.

As my son grows older, I notice how his passions pull him more in line with my husband. I notice how our common interests start to gain the slightest distance. He is still my sweet boy that asks me every morning how I slept or asks me how my work shift was. He is still my sweet boy who wants to help me at dinner time or play board games. But that deep childhood dependency—that need to be right within arms reach and a glance away from me—have fallen loosely to the margins. Long gone are the days when he needed constant holding, when he sat on my right hip, or when he cried when I put him in his play space behind a gate in direct view of the kitchen, frantically searching for a hot minute to make dinner. And yes, I am more relieved than not that those hard, hard days of raising toddlers are past us. And yes, this is as it should be. I am so proud of this confident boy that searches the neighborhood for a ball game of any sort to join or buries himself in the latest MLB baseball statistics or Cubs game. He is independent, he is self-assured, he is responsible, and I trust him.

But there are days when the bittersweet thoughts that tomorrow he will need me less than he needs me today creep shadows over my heart and weave my breaths with this tinge of sorrow. I don’t know if this is true, but I am fearful I am right.

But today. Today our family huddled up in a cabin up north. We watched a movie inside on a wind-whipping day as the lake side white caps crashed along the shore outside our windows.

The movie was full of suspense and sometimes scenes that made the kids shudder. And halfway through, I found my son squatting next to my seat. Then fully laying his head against my arm. I peeled off his baseball cap which is normally cemented to his head, and I ran my fingers through his hair. It felt gritty, dry, full and thick. Like the hair of a boy that has lived a summer on the baseball field, sliding and kicking up sand, sweaty, and free.

Today, my son needed me to be his security blanket through this movie. I remind myself that perhaps it’s not that he will need me less tomorrow, but he will lean on me differently as our mother-son relationship evolves.

What I’ll remember about today is what his hair felt like, because when the movie ended, his cap was back on, and he was back running outside in the brisk cold, swinging his bat at imaginary 96 mph pitches and daydreaming about that ball soaring past the fence.

In this ever changing climate we are currently living in, there is one constant that will always hold true. This is him now at this stage, and as this stage grows into the next, I simply could not be more thankful to be his mom.