Trust Broken, Now What?

  It has become painfully clear to me in loving another human being, in this case my beautiful and fragile son, trust is a negotiated line.  What I thought was a very clear boundary of right/wrong, acceptable/not, welcomed/no hospitality has become a space rather than a line.  So clear in my mind yet so flexible in his as launching, pushing off, setting his sail, finding his path, all these metaphors do not begin to match the emotional reality of a boy/man who crossed the line from womb to birth in my body.  Now, my boy/man is birthing himself at some great cost to him and to me, again.  The line widens to space and time.  Like the memory of giving birth--space stands spread out with legs wide apart.
  And hopefully, time.  Our sense of time is confined by societal milestones of developmental success, ah, almost 18, graduate from high school, register for the draft if male, get ready for college.  I want to measure sorrow and trauma, joy and celebration in increments of relationship, minute by minute, day by day, over the course of his life and mine together.  Our time together is drawing nigh as his lines open wide, he impatient to be out there on his own.  But I know this:  I am his harbor, his safe haven, his welcoming abode, his warm fire, his home.  Trust has been broken, yet home remains.  Thanks be to God.