Reflection

I got the article below in a an email from a good friend on mine who has three kids. It's funny that she sent now, as life around here has become much more hectic since Lila has been walking. I feel like I don't get much done as I am chasing her around most of the time. Roman and I have both been more tired than usual. When I go in her room to put her to bed or down for a nap, I always sit in the rocking chair with her for a couple minutes first to let her unwind. I drape her blanket across me and she lies on me, with her face on the soft side of the blanket. Sometimes she plays with her paci or touches the end of my ponytail, and others she just tucks her arms underneath her body and stares at the things in her room. Many times I'm thinking about what I need to do or just waiting to put her down so I can get a little time to myself. But lately it's in those moments that I think about how big she's getting and how I won't be able to hold her and rock with her for very much longer. One day soon she's going to be running and talking, and too independent to rock in the chair with her mommy. It's so easy to get wrapped up in the day-to-day things and forget that the times I get to rock with her are some of the best parts of the day. Sometimes she falls asleep and I sit there for a while longer holding her, trying so hard to etch the moment in my memory so I won't forget what it's like to be there with her. Hopefully it works.

Here's the article. I included a couple photos from today afterward.

Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columinst & 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 thatmake 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 Ilike. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jacketsand move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the tricksoap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except throughthe 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, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Wherethe Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But Isuspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on theplayground 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, then becomes 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 astern 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 putbaby 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 backsbecause 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 researchwill 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, andactive. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old whodid 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? Lastyear 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, thebad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmaresleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest camebarreling out of the 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 the McDonald's drive-throughspeaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window.(They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch theSimpsons for 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 particularlyclear 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 talkedabout, 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 and what was simply life.When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they wouldbecome who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect theysimply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to berelaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes overthe top.And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the wo rld who have done more than anyone to excavate myessential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was boundand determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.






Our "ward" (aka Grandma Frances' dog) for the last week sunning herself. Sweet dog!