An excellent piece of advice

This piece, left by HeatherP in the comments below, is just brilliant.  Really eye opening.  Please remind me of these words when I get all anal and worked up.  Added to your wonderful advice below I am really going to do my best to RELAX (might be difficult for me but will try) and enjoy each stage and not stress too much whether I am doing the right thing or not.  It’s just that I so badly want to do the best I can.  But okay, I hear what every one is saying.

Lordy, I am painful aren’t I?  I think I am my own worst enemy.  Shut up Tertia, you asshole. 

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If not for the photographs, I might have a hard time believing they ever existed. The pensive infant with the swipe of dark bangs and the black button eyes of a Raggedy Andy doll. The placid baby with the yellow ringlets and the high piping voice The sturdy toddler with the lower lip that curled into an apostrophe above her chin. 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 the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make 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 I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves.  Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber duckie at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past. Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach. T. Berry Brazleton. Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early- childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories.

What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations -- 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 becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One boy is toilet trained at 3, his brother at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby 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 backs because 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 research will follow. First science said environment was the great shaper of human nature. But it certainly seemed as though those babies had distinct personalities, some contemplative, some gregarious, some crabby. And eventually science said that was right, and that they were hard-wired exactly as we had suspected.

Still, the temptation to defer to the experts was huge. The literate parent, who approaches everything; cooking, decorating, life as though there were a paper due or an exam scheduled, is in particular peril when the kids arrive.

How silly it all seems now, the obsessing about language acquisition and physical milestones, the riding the waves of normal, gifted, hyperactive, all those labels that reduced individuality to a series of cubbyholes. But I could not help myself. I had watched my mother casually raise five children born over 10 years, but by watching her I intuitively knew that I was engaged in the greatest and potentially most catastrophic task of my life. I knew that there were mothers who had worried with good reason, that there were children who would have great challenges to meet. We were lucky; ours were not among them. Nothing horrible or astonishing happened: there was hernia surgery, some stitches, a broken arm and a fuchsia cast to go with it. Mostly ours were the ordinary everyday terrors and miracles of raising a child, and our children's challenges the old familiar ones of learning to live as themselves in the world. The trick was to get past my fears, my ego and my inadequacies to help them do that.

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, and active. I was 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 something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? 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, mistakes were made. They 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. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out 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 and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

But the 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 and 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 a while to figure out who the experts were.

Anna Quindlen

Comments

[Heather]

How do you even respond to that when it reaches so far into you and grabs you by the heart? Especially when you can't see through the tears. I have 2 daughters, 4 & 6 and I really needed that so much. Thank you.

[Donna]

Fabulous, thank you.

[Ute]

Wow. I've just copied that one to my hard drive. After all, there's just 6 weeks left to take it all in before I'll need it... ;-)

[lurker]

Tertia, that was great. I want you to print out some copies, and post one in each room of your house. You ARE a good mom!

[Katie]

What a heart moving post. It makes me both happy and sad at the same time. More to the point it makes me think that I should stop worring about the little things, like did she have enough to eat today? Did I read the right book to her? Is it wrong to give her chocolate custard even though she obviously loves it?
Thanks for the post Tertia, its one of those special ones.

[Boulder]

I'm so glad you brought attention to that post. I read ALL the comments, and that one just hit me straight on. It is brilliant.

[katie]

Just beautiful. I have to share it with my mom.

[Brandee]

Tertia~

The author of this piece is Anna Quindlen....I've read it before and I am always amazed at how very true it is. I just thought you might want to give her credit. Beautiful piece, and completely true. Anna's other stuff is just as wonderful. I think you'd like her....in fact I think I know what I am going to send you for a long overdue baby gift.

Brandee

[Joy]

My babe is barely the size of a grain of rice (5 weeks into pregnancy) and I am worried about everything. After losing triplets babies, and then a miscarriage, I justify that fear somehow. BUT, this article helps me to let go and just enjoy today and whatever 'todays' will come. Thank you...

[blackbird]

Oh Tertia --
now, here I am crying, all alone across the ocean and world. Before I started reading it I thought to myself "tell Tertia to stop thinking so much -- there isn't so much thinking needed, more breathing and being. If that makes any sense. That Ms Quindlen knows. Now stop reading and go smell their necks.

[Rachel]

Yes,that piece is by Anna Quindlen. It was published in Newsweek though I don't remember when. I can't get into the archives to check if it is "The Good Enough Mother", if not, then that's another one you'd probably enjoy..

Anna Quindlen is a voice of sanity that drowns out the uptight preachiness of every (mostly male) child-rearing expert out there and not a few of the shrill mothers as well.

Tertia, you rock. Your kids are gorgeous. They will always be gorgeous.

Rachel

ps Oh, my requisite bit of 'vice: don't worry about worrying. ;)

[Peggy]

so true

[Lisa]

It was about 18 months ago in Newsweek I believe. I actually have it somewhere. You know Anna Quindlen's book is fabulous. Lots of columns on a wide variety of subjects. It's called Living Out Loud.

[Mollie]

Amen and hallelujah.

[Kathy]

Cooking and cleaning can wait 'til tomorrow
'Cause babies grow up much to our sorrow.
So fly away cobwebs, dust go to sleep
I'm rocking my baby, and babies don't keep.

[dana]

I own and have multiple times read every AQ book, she's great. Really brilliant. And so are you Tertia! Your babies will be a tremendous success.

[Lisa]

That's a wonderful piece. I must now have a look for AQ books, sounds like she's already written my dreamt of "parenting, for real parents and real children" book ;)

I know the one thing I've learnt after having 5 children with 10.5yrs between them, is that time is precious, the bad things don't last for ever, and to enjoy every moment ... and a lot of the small stuff I used to stress over with the older one's just wasn't worth stressing over.

Now ... if someone could give me a magic book for teenagers???

[Neety]

Oh. That was beautiful.
:-)

[martina]

That was amazing, and so well put- AMEN to that sista!! Puts it all into perspective.

[Heidi]

Thank you for posting that! I am going to share it with the other moms in my playgroup. Thank goodness they are a wonderful, supportive group and ease all the "worries" of childrearing rather than add to them. (You have enough already.)

[joyce]

This piece is actually called "On Being a Mom". I can't help finding stuff like this out, I'm addicted to Google. Here is a link to "The Good Enough Mother" Definitely taking this to heart when I have kids.

[Ria]

Ha...I was just looking for "The Good Enough Mother" and see that Joyce posted the link. Everyone should read it too!

It's a similar column Quindlen did as part of the recent Newsweek "Mothering" issue. As soon as I saw it in the mag I thought of all these recent blog entries and discussions.

[larissa]

I once heard Anna Quindlen speak on being a working woman, working mother, about wage inequities and various related topics, etc. After her talk people were invited to ask questions, and the first asked What would you do differently? Anna Quindlen didn't take even a second to answer, "Front and back double stroller, instead of side-by-side." It was great. Thought that advice might be pertinent to your situation, Tertia.