My son wants to get engaged and it hurts

I really hope my son’s girlfriend doesn’t read this column.

If she does, I’ll be in trouble, because it will spoil one of the biggest surprises of her life. He is 28 years old and told me he wants to get engaged.

The news gave me a panic attack because I think he is much too young. I was 25 when I got engaged to his mother, so 28 is probably okay – for other young men.

But not for that baby boy who looked into my eyes in the maternity ward of the Kempton Park Hospital in 1993.

“Hallo,” I said when I held him for the first time.

“I don’t mean to sound like Darth Vader, but I am your father.”

I wasn’t the best father on earth. Far from it. I’m only human and I make mistakes. But nobody could have loved him more.

As a four-year-old, I held his hand as I walked him to nursery school 300m down the road every morning.

“Promise me you’ll never grow up,” I asked him one day.

As always, he was eager to please, but he didn’t want to miss out on growing up. “Okay,” he said.

“But at least allow me to become six before I have to stop growing.”

“Agreed,” I said.

ALSO READ: Micro weddings are now a thing, here’s what to know

And during my lonely walk back home, I smiled. I loved my son. But he didn’t stop growing. I spent hours next to his bed when he was sick.

I paced up and down outside a theatre when he crushed his thumb and a surgeon had to save the limb.

I drove him to athletics practice every day and watch him nervously as he sprinted around the track at race meets.

There was university, our hours of discussing Persian carpets and sport and life in general. Then, the years he was away working in Cape Town.

And now there’s an engagement ring in my safe at home, waiting for the big moment on Monday evening. I can’t walk next to him and hold his hand anymore.

He is starting a new journey being a man with his own family – and there is a hole in my heart. Ashante, please look after him.

To you, he may be a big, grown man. But to me, he is still my baby boy.