Happy Mother's Day

My friend Heidi sent this to me...I thought you could relate whether you have kids or not, since I think so much of life is true to this story...

By Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author:

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrowbut in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what Ihave today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the samebooks I do and have learned not to be afraid ofdisagreeing with me in their opinion of them, whosometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until Ichoke and cry, who need razor blades and shower geland privacy, who want to keep their doors closed morethan 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 forthe bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, thebaby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past. Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. BerryBrazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry andsleeping through the night and early-childhoodeducation, have all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that ifyou flipped the pages dust would rise like memories.

What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and thewell-meaning relations --what they taught me, was thatthey 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, faralong, you realize that it is an endless essay. No oneknows anything. One child responds well to positivereinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trainedat 3, his sibling at 2.

When my first child was born, parents were told to putbaby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke onhis own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research onsudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent thisever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and thensoothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself.Eventually the research will follow.

I remember 15years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderfulbooks on child development, in which he describesthree different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an18-month old who did not walk. Was there some thingwrong with his fat little legs? Was there somethingwrong with his tiny little mind? Was hedevelopmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China . Next year he goesto 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 ofFame.' The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the badlanguage, mine, not theirs. The times the baby felloff the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summercamp. The day when the youngest came barreling out ofthe classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and Iresponded, 'What did you get wrong?'. (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at theMcDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove awaywithout picking it up from the window. (They allinsisted I include that.) I did not allow them towatch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most ofus make while doing this. I did not live in the momentenough. This is particularly clear now that the momentis gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass ona quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summerday, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember whatwe ate, and what we talked about, and how theysounded, and how they looked when they slept thatnight. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get onto the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish Ihad treasured the doing a little more and the gettingit 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 werevery small, I suppose I thought someday they wouldbecome who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selvesbecause they demanded in a thousand ways that I backoff and let them be. The books said to be relaxed andI was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I woundup with the three people I like best in the world, whohave done more than anyone to excavate my essentialhumanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. Itjust took me a while to figure out who the experts were.