From Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author.....
All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. Itake great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, twotaller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same booksI do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in theiropinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until Ichoke and cry, who need razor blades and showergel and privacy, who want tokeep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to thebathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all bythemselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubberducky 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 me now.Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rrivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, haveall grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are,they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspectthat if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories.
What thosebooks taught me, finally,and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaningrelations --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, then becomesmultiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endlessessay.. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positivereinforcement, anothercan be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilettrained at 3, his sibling at 2.
When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on hisbelly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my lastarri ved, babies were put down on their backs because of research on suddeninfant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty isterrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself.Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over oneof Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which hedescribes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. Iwas looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk.Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there somethingwrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physicallychallenged? Was I insane?
Last year he went to China . Next year he goes tocollege. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes weremade. T hey have all been enshrined in the, "Remember-When- Mom-Did Hall ofFame." The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, nottheirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late forpreschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The daywhen the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on hergeography test, and I responded, "What did you get wrong?". (She insisted Iinclude that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-throughspeaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They allinsisted I include 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 while doingthis. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear nowthat the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one pictureof the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of theswing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish could remember whatwe ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they lookedwhen they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get onto the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doinga 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 whatwas simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday theywould become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect theysimply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand waysthat I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I wasoften tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look howit all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in theworld, 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 learnfrom the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the expertswere.
