Worth a read

This seems to be making the mommy-blog circuit, so sorry if you've seen it before. Just my opinion, but this is really worth a read. It made my heart clench up and my eyes well with tears. I think I may just be a better mommy tomorrow because I read this tonight.

From Anna 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 thesame books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing withme in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that makeme laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower geland privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like.Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and movefood from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap Ibought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby isburied 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. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on siblingrivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education,have all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the WildThings Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect thatif you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What thosebooks taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taughtme, 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, thenbecomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that itis an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well topositive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voiceand 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 onhis belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the timemy last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because ofresearch on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent thisever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventuallyyou must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow.I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderfulbooks on child development, in which he describes three differentsorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for asub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was theresomething wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrongwith his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physicallychallenged? 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, mistakeswere made. T hey have all been enshrined in the, "Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame." The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the badlanguage, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. Thetimes I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover.The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling outof the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded,"What did you get wrong?". (She insisted I include that.) The time Iordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then droveaway without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted Iinclude that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for thefirst two seasons. What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make whiledoing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularlyclear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. Thereis one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quiltin the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And Iwish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and howthey 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 littlemore and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me andwhat was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thoughtsomeday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. NowI suspect they simply grew into their true selves because theydemanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The bookssaid to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I wassometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound upwith the three people I like best in the world, who have done morethan anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the booksnever 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.