Happy Mother's Day!!

[Guest guest]

Happy Mother's Day.......

From Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author :

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in

disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three

almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three

people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be

afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who

sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and

cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want

to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go

to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to

mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the

bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried

deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable

haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me

now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton, Dr. Spock. The ones on

sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and

early-childhood education have all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon

and

Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well

used.

But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like

memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the

women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations

--what they taught me, was that they couldn't really teach me very much

at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test,

then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize

that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child

responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with

a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his

sibling at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to

bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By

the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs

because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent

this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing.

Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the

research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of

Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which

He describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and

active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month

old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little

legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was

he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane?

Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk

just fine. He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me,

mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the,

" Remember- When- Mom-Did Hall of Fame. " The outbursts, the temper tantrums,

the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off

the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The

nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest

came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography

test, and I responded, " What did you get wrong? " . (She insisted

I include that.) The time I ordered food at the Mc's drive-

through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from

the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them

to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I

thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make

while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is

particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in

photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting

in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer

day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate,

and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked

when they slept that night.

I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next

thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a

little more and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was

me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I

thought someday they would become who they were because of what

I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves

because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them

be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense,

matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned

out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who

have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's

what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to

learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the

experts were. "

************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.

[Guest guest]

Thank you!

I think I can forgive myself a few more things after that.

And that's a great M. day gift for sure.

;-)

in Ma.

************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.

[Guest guest]

Thank you!

I think I can forgive myself a few more things after that.

And that's a great M. day gift for sure.

;-)

in Ma.

************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.

[Guest guest]

Thank you!

I think I can forgive myself a few more things after that.

And that's a great M. day gift for sure.

;-)

in Ma.

************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.