I folded my son’s hoodie and realised it still smelled like outside

Dear Delyara, I was doing the washing late in the evening when I picked up my son’s hoodie from the clean pile. It smelled of cold air, school corridors, cheap deodorant, and that strange in-between age where boys are still children and already somewhere else in their heads. I stood there holding it longer than necessary. Maybe because I suddenly realised how much of motherhood is touching the edges of your child’s life after they’ve already lived it. The bag. The socks. The hoodie. The lunchbox. The small evidence of a day you were not fully inside. He came home, ate, grunted a few answers, disappeared into his room, and yet here I was later, folding his day with my own hands. That made me feel tender. And lonely. And proud. And slightly left behind. I put the hoodie away and thought, this is what growing children do to you. They keep becoming more themselves, and you keep loving them in the quiet work that remains.