To all parents!

For All My Favorite Moms by Anna Quindlen, NewsweekColumnist and Author

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrowbut in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what Ihave today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am,one closing in fast. Three people who read the samebooks I do and have learned not to be afraid ofdisagreeing with me in their opinion of them, whosometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until Ichoke and cry, who need razor blades and shower geland privacy, who want to keep their doors closed morethan I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom,zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouthall by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought forthe bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, thebaby is buried deep within each, barely discernibleexcept through the unreliable haze of the past.Everything in all the books I once poured 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 thosebooks taught me, finally, and what the women on theplayground taught me, and the well-meaning relations--what they taught me, was that they couldn't reallyteach 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 put baby to bed on his belly sothat he would not choke on his own spit-up. By thetime my last arrived, babies were put down on theirbacks because of research on sudden infant deathsyndrome.To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty isterrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you mustlearn to trust yourself. Eventually the research willfollow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr.Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, inwhich he describes three different sorts of infants:average, quiet, and active. I was looking for asub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did notwalk. Was there something wrong with his fat littlelegs? Was there something wrong with his tiny littlemind? Was he developmentally delayed, physicallychallenged? 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 beenenshrined 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. Thenightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The daywhen the youngest came barreling out of the classroomwith a 98 on her geography test, and I responded,"What did you get wrong?" (She insisted I includethat.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald'sdrive-through speaker and then drove away withoutpicking it up from the window. (They all insisted Iinclude that.) I did not allow them to watch theSimpsons for the first two seasons. What was Ithinking?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 onepicture of the three of them, sitting in the grass ona quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summerday, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember whatwe ate, and what we talked about, and how theysounded, and how they looked when they slept thatnight. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get onto the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish Ihad treasured the doing a little more and the gettingit done a little less. Even today I'm not sure whatworked and what didn't, what was me and what wassimply life. When they were very small, I suppose Ithought someday they would become who they werebecause of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simplygrew into their true selves because they demanded in athousand ways that I back off and let them be. Thebooks 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 thethree people I like best in the world who have donemore than 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 me a while to figure out who the experts were.