The best thing I have read in a long time

My dear friend Lisa sent me this email, and also posted this article on her blog. Please take 5 minutes to read this, it truly is one of the most important thing I have read lately. After the article, read my vow to I wrote to Lisa and told to myself. I am going to hold myself to it!

On Being A Parentby Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author
If not for the photographs, I might have a hard timebelieving they ever existed. The pensive infant withthe swipe of dark bangs and the black button eyes of aRaggedy Andy doll. The placid baby with the yellowringlets and the high piping voice. The sturdy toddlerwith the lower lip that curled into an apostropheabove her chin.All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrowbut in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what Ihave today: threealmost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing infast. Three people who read the same books I do andhave learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with mein their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgarjokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, whoneed razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who wantto keep their doors closed more than I like. Who,miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jacketsand move food from plate to mouth all by themselves.Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with arubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deepwithin each, barely discernible except through theunreliable haze of the past.Everything in all the books I once pored over isfinished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. BerryBrazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry andsleeping through the night and early-childhoodeducation, all grown obsolete. Along with GoodnightMoon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered,spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flippedthe pages dust would rise like memories.What those books taught me, finally, and what thewomen on the playground taught me, and thewell-meaning relations taught me, was that theycouldn't really teach me very much at all.Raising children is presented at first as a true-falsetest, 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 astern 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, babieswere 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, andactive. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an18-month old who did not walk. Was there somethingwrong with his fat little legs? Was there somethingwrong with his tiny little mind? Was hedevelopmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was Iinsane? 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 beenenshrined 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 preschoolpickup. 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 Iinclude 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 wasI 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 inthe grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set ona summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I couldremember what we ate, and what we talked about, andhow they sounded, and how they looked when they sleptthat night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry toget on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. Iwish I had treasured the doing a little more and thegetting 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 werevery small, I suppose I thought someday they wouldbecome who they were because of what I'd done. Now Isuspect 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 and I was often tense,matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. Andlook how it all turned out. I wound up with the threepeople I like best in the world, who have done morethan anyone to excavate my essential humanity.That's what the books never told me. I was bound anddetermined to learn from the experts. It just took mea while to figure out who the experts were....

Lisa, How damn true is that? That gave me goosebumps. I already have regreted not taking the time to live in the now with Mattie. Especially with this arm thing. I just wish her day away, thinking tomorrow will bring along a better day, one where she will be using her arms like a "normal" baby, instead of treasuring how she learned how to growl, or how she clears her throat like my dad because he does it all the time around her. I vow that starting today, I will not wish her days, or her minutes away, and will stop to count her fingers and her toes some more. Thank you for this, and I hope you don't mind, but I am going to post this on my blog too!
2:43 AM