Spending time with my son is where I find joy

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Something our children seldom realize is how much their presence means to us. It's not always about them doing anything for us. Sometimes I love just being near my son. As he has gotten older he spends less and less time with me and that's just the way it is. He's growing up and he has his own interests he enjoys and he loves time by himself. He doesn't remember that not so long ago I was his entire world. I couldn't spend five minutes by myself without him wanting to come sit in my lap or have me read to him or watch a movie with him. Now I get all of the alone time I could only dream of back then and I find myself missing his nearness. I do enjoy my alone time but those moments spent with my son are everything. Now that he's older we spend our time differently. I've been sharing old movies with him which he has really gotten into. Name me another 14 year old boy who likes Doris Day, Lucille Ball, and Dean Martin. He loves The Pajama Game and he loves musicals in general. His dad hates most musicals so he and I watch them without him and sing along. Last night we watched one of his dad's favorite movies "Airplane!" it always surprises me that my husband loves that movie so much considering the number of older actors and the references my husband doesn't understand he had to ask me who Ethel Merman was. My son was only mildly amused by it while he cracked up during some of the movies he watched with me. My son absolutely loves Monty Python and the Holy Grail which it amuses me he enjoyed that movie so much but was only very mildly interested in Airplane. My son is very much a comedy guy. He loves most comedy movies and he also loves musicals. I've really enjoyed sharing my interests with him and having him actually become interested like my love for history he has started to appreciate more. He asks me questions about things and we just enjoy learning about some of those things together, but that said he also really enjoys talking on the phone to his friends and playing video games and that takes up a lot of his time. I often miss when he just wanted to spend time with me, so the time I do get with him now is everything. We do weekend trips sometimes where we go and do things together as a family and he really enjoys those trips. He loves learning about places and things. We've done a lot of adventuring and exploring. We recently started playing this game where it's a family trivia game where you answer questions about the family member reading the card and it also has some funny challenges and things thrown in that keep it interesting. So far, I've won every single game we have played. My husband and son say it's not fair because I actually talk to them both, but they don't talk to each other, and I told them that's their fault for not communicating with each other. I take the time to talk to both of them and seek them out and I listen when they're talking to me. The game is fun in that it also teaches us things about each other we may not have known. Some of the questions do have more than one answer but you have to guess the first answer that comes to that person's mind. They have guessed some answers that were true about me but wasn't the answer I had come up with off the top of my head. I love the time I do get to spend with my son and in a lot of ways I'm still learning about him because he's not the little boy that he was and he is becoming a young man with different interests outside of the ones I know about and the ones I remember from when he was little. I think the thing I miss most are the hugs and cuddles he used to give me. I'm not a hugger by nature but I cherished the ones I got from him. My son has also never been a big hugger, but he almost always had one for me. I was the only person he would cuddle up with the way he did and felt comfortable enough to hug and now I can feel that slipping away. It's part of him growing up but I always tell him it's ok to let his guard down sometimes and get a hug from mom. I will always be his biggest fan. I will always be there whenever possible. He is the single best thing that ever happened to me and just getting to spend quality time with him really is everything to me. I tell him all the time what he means to me. I know he hates it because he doesn't do emotions well and honestly I never have either but he has always been the exception to that because I've never wanted him to have to guess how I felt about him. I always wanted to have the kind of relationship with him that I never had with my parents. My parents love/loved me but I never felt I could talk to them without judgment and nagging. I could never just freely be me. My mom only knows me on a singular level, she doesn't realize how little she actually knows about me. I don't want it to be that way between me and my son, so I work hard to make sure he knows I'm listening. That isn't to say that I am trying to be his friend he has friends, he needs parents. I want him to grow up to be a good person so I do my best to give him discipline while also making it clear that I love him and that I'm here for him and that if he needs me he can count on me to show up and that he can talk to me and have me listen without just lecturing him, I do sometimes struggle with this one because I am a mom but I am a work in progress and he knows that too. I want him to know I'm here and he can still be himself around me without me judging him the way I was always judged growing up. I never want to be the person he needs a break from but the person he goes to when he needs to feel safe and be comforted. I want to be his safe space. I hope he knows that he is my happy place. Spending time with him is what makes me happy. It's never about what we do but the time spent with him. He's always been my joy. Kids grow up fast so enjoy every moment you get with them.