Mother's Day

 On Being A Parent

by Anna Quindlen

[T]he biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing 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 a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1.  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 little more 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 would become who they were because of what I'd done.  Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be.

The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense; matter-of-fact, I was 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 more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity.  That's what the books never told me.

I was bound and determined to learn from the experts.

It just took me awhile to figure out who the experts were.