Editor’s note: The IJ is reprinting some of the late Beth Ashley’s columns. This is from 2017.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been blessed with a visit from my No. 4 son.

Gil lives in Boulder, Colorado, now, so — more’s the pity — I don’t see him often. We talk on the phone and email a lot, but I want what any mother wants — a check-in, a conversation, an occasional hug.

Having him in his old bedroom has been a warm reminder of the days when he and his four brothers all lived here and kept this place hopping.

The swimming pool was rarely still, awash as they cannonballed in.

The cookie drawer was always near-empty as the boys and their friends raided it for after-school snacks.

The TV was constantly tuned in to baseball, football or basketball games.

The garage vibrated with the sound of would-be rock bands.

The toilet seat was never down.

Not that I objected for a moment. Those were the happiest days of my life as a mother.

Just having them here kept me smiling all day and particularly all night. I loved knowing all five were asleep where I could find them.

The boys are scattered now, and it’s a rare day — Christmas Eve sometimes, or an Easter Sunday picnic — that we are all together. I am sad just thinking about it.

The family room bulletin board and my desk in the bedroom are plastered with pictures — Pete fencing, Jeff fishing and Gil playing guitar. My sons may be gone, but they’re never forgotten.

When work assignments brought Gil back here this month, I could not have been happier.

We watched baseball games and Rachel Maddow together. He remembered games we’d attended at the Coliseum or Stanford Stadium years ago; he even remembered the scores. We snorted together at the lunatic pronouncements of President Donald Trump. We talked politics and traffic and foreign travel day and night.

In the time he’s been here, he leaps to his feet to help whenever we need it. He clears dishes. He solves computer glitches. He hauls trash and runs errands. Now and then he finds time to visit old Redwood High friends like Maura or Matt. And several times a day, he calls home, checking on his beloved wife, Laurie, and their remarkable daughter Kelly Ann, now 16. He shares pictures of Kelly, singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” for high school basketball games, or practicing her acrobatic skills as a cheerleader. My life is enriched on all fronts.

I realize that Gil’s presence is only temporary, that I can’t hold him here much longer. But I’m heartened to know that he got here and might come again.

I raised him to live on his own, but if I had my druthers, he’d still live in Greenbrae.

A mother is a mother forever.