Looking forward, looking back

Ben is on his way to China.

He decided he fancied learning martial arts and so he found a Shaolin school in Qufu that would take him, and enrolled. He's standing at our little local station with all his worldly goods on his back and expectation in his heart. He's 18.

I am seeing him off.

He is only looking sober because he's afraid I might cry and he really doesn't like it when I shed tears. Inside he's going 'Yaaayyyyy!'

I'm not going 'Yaaayyyyy!' at all. I'm thinking that it was only yesterday he was born.. And that for so many years, when I owned the big pair of shoes at one end of the line by the door, his were the teeny tiny ones at the other end..

Snif