On Parenthood

I am hormonal, of late. But this really touched me. I think it is so true, agreed with every little thing she said, and it really made me stop and think.....

From Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author:

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but indisbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Threepeople who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraidof disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tellvulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doorsclosed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zipup 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 discernibleexcept through the unreliable haze of the past.Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for menow. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhoodeducation, have all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon andWhere the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. ButI suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women onthe playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations --what theytaught 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 thatit is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child respondswell to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, hissibling 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 time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because ofresearch on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually youmust 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 a sub-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 bad language, 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 barrelingout 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 McDonald's drive-through speaker andthen drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsonsfor the first 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 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 aquilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and1. 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 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. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because theydemanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. Thebooks said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and Iwas 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 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.