Family Art

This is a follow-up to my “Fall Cleaning” post a couple of weeks ago, in which I mentioned that, as part of an uncharacteristic burst of domestic energy I’ve had this fall, I was planning to work with my daughters to create brighter artwork for our walls.

I did. I dove headlong into my home mania and ordered a large blank canvas from Amazon. (If you don’t live in Vermont, chances are you have an art supply store within easy driving distance and don’t have to support massive, evil, online retailers. I do not have that option.) I bought a fresh pack of Crayola’s Washable Kids’ Paint from the grocery store. There were exactly six colors in the box — one for each member of our family. Perfect!

Armed with these simple materials, I was ready to make my vision a reality. I used pencil to trace the outline of a heart on the canvas. My vision was to have each member of our family — our four girls plus my husband and me — dip their hands into a different color of paint and make two colored handprints on either side of the heart. The finished product would be a heart shape outlined neatly by our family’s handprints.

I decided to start with our youngest child, 17-month-old Abigail (paint color: orange.) She’s the wiggliest, so I’d get her out of the way first. I scooped her up and dipped her palms into the pool of orange paint that I’d poured onto a paper plate. She looked at her hands, looked at me as if to say, “What are you doing???,” then balled up her fists and started yelling. I tried to pry open her palms and press them onto the canvas: no dice. She was all resistance. After a few fruitless minutes, I had two orange blobs up at the top of our heart.

Not an auspicious beginning, but not a huge problem. She’s the baby; one day, we’ll point to those blobs and laugh about her paint panic (this from a child who ends every meal covered with food — I don’t get it.)

Next up was daughter #2: five-year-old Campbell (paint color: yellow.) Campbell was enthusiastic; so enthusiastic that, after making her first two handprints on the heart, she re-dipped her hands in the paint and — before I could stop her — smeared yellow around the inside of the heart.

“No, Campbell, that’s –” I began, then stopped myself. Almost seven years of parenting to get to this point, but at that moment I realized that this was no longer my project. And that was okay. This was a family effort, and if my family wasn’t behaving according to my perfect plan, I’d just have to roll with it.

So I stood by and watched while Campbell made several more sets of handprints around the canvas, until she was satisfied.

Then came Georgia, three years old, who’d be adding red handprints. Her preschool does a lot of handprint art, so I was dealing with a pro. She dipped her hands neatly into the paint, wiped off the excess, and made multiple sets of beautiful red prints across the canvas.

Six-year-old Fiona approached the canvas and wailed, “They didn’t leave any space for me!” When I pointed out the few white patches still visible, she dipped her hands into the purple paint and got busy making her mark, proudly smearing purple around and over everyone else’s prints like a true firstborn.

Our artwork no longer bore any resemblance to a heart; instead, it was a big, colorful, smeary mess of handprints. But I wasn’t giving up: two grown-ups to go. So, Erick and I used our handprints (green and blue, respectively) to trace out the original heart on top of the girls’ impressionistic prints.

Here is the result:

I stood back and looked at our artwork, and it wasn’t at all like my original vision. It was perfect: The perfect representation of our family. There are Erick and I, trying with love to give some shape to the chaos. And the chaos itself: these colorful, exuberant, uncontainable girls. Showing me how lack of control is more beautiful than perfection.

Fiona thought we should write a Bible verse in the middle of the heart, so in light pencil I inscribed her favorite verse: “With man this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible.”

Which is also a very accurate representation of our family.

Learning to Knit

This month, I’ve been learning to knit.

It’s the second — or possibly third — time I’ve learned to knit. I’m not sure, because I’ve also learned to crochet in the past and I can’t recall when I was knitting vs. crocheting. Which gives you some idea of the problem. I imagine neuroscientists studying my brain: “Fascinating,” they say, “it all lights up, except the parts responsible for recalling card games and knitting.”

My re-learning how to knit is part service project, and part for my daughters.

It’s challenging to volunteer with young children. Many of us parents were Community-Minded Volunteers for Important Social Causes before having children. When we had children, we thought, “This is wonderful! We’ve created small volunteers! They’ll grow up being involved in their community! Our family will have such fun serving together!”

Then we tried it.

The first challenge to volunteering with young children is that there just aren’t that many kid-friendly volunteer opportunities out there. They may claim to be kid-friendly, but “they” are usually childless 20-somthing idealists who haven’t thought through the implications of having a three-year-old serve food, or pick up trash, or even garden.

The second challenge is the children themselves. Young children have short attention spans and limited skills. My husband and I learned very quickly that whenever we attempted to volunteer as a family, one of us might be able to get some actual work done; the other parent spent the entire time chasing the kids around once they got bored with whatever they were supposed to be doing.

None of this is a reason not to volunteer with your children. Sure, there will be seasons when your family is of limited usefulness — maybe even detrimental to the Important Social Cause — but the point is to model commitment for our kids. It’s like how I wince whenever one of my daughters says, “I want to help!” while picking up a plate from the table, or hoisting a grocery bag, or wielding a shovel; chances are I’ll be cleaning up the mess they create by “helping,” but it’s more important to validate their desire to help.

Despite these challenges, I’d found the ideal volunteer opportunity: Every Tuesday for the past two years, I sat at the circulation desk of the Sarah Partridge Library — our town’s teeny, three-room branch library — while the sole librarian, Mrs. Rogers, led preschool story time. Whichever daughters were with me could participate in story time while I worked, and if they got wiggly they could amuse themselves in the children’s room.

That all changed this fall, when our third daughter started preschool and her pick-up time conflicted with story time.

I called Mrs. Rogers to see if there was anything else I might do to help. She suggested I help lead the Thursday afternoon craft time, when children in grades 1 and higher learn to knit. Their knit squares become a baby blanket, which Mrs. Rogers donates to a local charity.

“Sure!” I said. Craft time was conveniently after school, and my older daughters had expressed an interest in knitting.

There were only two potential red flags in my new volunteer gig:

1. I didn’t remember how to knit.

2. My oldest child is in Grade 1. Which meant I’d be bringing along three additional children who couldn’t participate in the craft time.

But Mrs. Rogers seemed okay with everything. What could go wrong?

WEEK 1: We show up to craft time 30 minutes late, because I had to get two of my daughters up from nap and into the minivan, get the other two off the bus and into the minivan, and drive into town and back in afternoon traffic to get our dog from the groomer. When we arrive, Mrs. Rogers teaches us how to roll the amount of yarn we’ll need into a ball. It turns out that this is harder than it sounds. All of my children lose interest after 5 minutes and go play with their friends in the children’s room.

WEEK 2: We show up 15 minutes late because one of my daughters had a post-school meltdown. Mrs. Rogers has everyone sand their own pair of knitting needles. Then she teaches us to “finger knit” yarn bracelets. With a great deal of help (and frustration), my two oldest daughters are able to produce bracelets. Then Mrs. Rogers makes popcorn, which my children spill all over the floor. Over the next week, they show off their knit bracelets to all of their relatives, so I suppose it was worth it.

WEEK 3: We’re on time! The knitting needles are ready! Mrs. Rogers teaches us to cast on and we begin knitting! My daughters lose interest after 3 minutes, but I’m hooked — so hooked that I neglect to stop the baby from eating popcorn off of the floor (to the horror of several grandmothers present). Then my daughters clog the toilet. There’s no plunger, so craft time ends with me scooping an enormous ball of toilet paper out of the toilet using my bare hands.

WEEK 3.5: After spending several evenings knitting and listening to old NPR podcasts, I’m confident…and addicted. Before dinner one night, I suggest to my oldest daughter that we practice knitting together. She’s delighted. The problem? She wants to practice on my knitting, not her own. Feeling much the same as when my daughters offer to “help,” I manage to squash my proprietary feelings for my own knitting and show her how to continue what I’ve started.

And she gets it!

I’m thrilled; she’s thrilled.

Then I have to get dinner on the table. At that moment, things go awry with the knitting. What follows is one of those timeless mother-daughter exchanges:

HER: Mommy!!! Help!!! This isn’t working!!!

ME: Hang on! I can’t help right now! I’m holding a boiling pot and a fussy baby!

HER (in tears): You don’t love me! You never loved me!

Or something like that.

WEEK 4: The dog jumps the fence and goes on a joy run as we’re preparing to leave for craft time; by the time we get her back in, we’re 20 minutes late. My mother shows up to help wrangle the little ones. My oldest daughter knits happily — for about 4 minutes.

“I don’t know,” I said to Mrs. Rogers the other day, “I feel like I’m creating more chaos than I’m helping.”

“Oh no, it’s good to have you here,” she said. It sounded convincing.

So we carry on. There will be knitting.

And this time, maybe I’ll even remember how to knit next year.

In Memoriam

“Writers are always selling someone out.”

So wrote Joan Didion in her preface to Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

I recalled this quote last week at breakfast, when my husband asked me over the head of our crying daughter, “Is this going to become a blog post?”

“Of course not,” I replied, indignant. “It’s too sad.”

Three hours later, I sat at my computer and composed this blog post.

Writers are always selling someone out.

Our daughter was crying because she missed Pink Sweetie.

She missed Pink Sweetie because she’d received a letter from Pink Sweetie.

Let me back up: Pink Sweetie was — is — a “lovey,” a soft little blankie with an animal head (a bear, in this case.) Pink Sweetie was a baby gift for Fiona, but Fiona passed her — along with her companion, White Sweetie — to Campbell after her birth. Campbell never passed Pink Sweetie on; she clutched Pink Sweetie, buried her nose in Pink Sweetie, brought Pink Sweetie everywhere — including the ferry across Lake Champlain, where, one fateful summer Saturday, the wind swept Pink Sweetie out of Campbell’s grip and into the water.

Campbell went through all the stages of grief in the course of 30 minutes, from denial to acceptance. We told stories about how Pink Sweetie was having a great time hanging out with the mermaids and Champ the Lake Monster on the bottom of Lake Champlain.

This was over two years ago. Nothing ever fully replaced Pink Sweetie; not White Sweetie, not even the new Pink Sweetie that Fiona bought Campbell for her next birthday. Every six months or so, Campbell would stare into space, tears welling, and say, “I miss Pink Sweetie.”

Last Friday, an envelope addressed to Campbell arrived in the mail. In it was a typed letter from Pink Sweetie, reporting that all was well under the Lake. Like Campbell, Pink Sweetie had started Kindergarten. She’d made a new friend. She’d even visited Burlington, on a seagull joyride. And she promised to wave if Campbell called her name by the Lake.

(This letter wasn’t really from Pink Sweetie, of course, but from my husband, with whom I fell deeper in love as I read it. When asked what inspired him to write and send it from his office, he replied, “My research wasn’t going very well that day.”)

As I read Campbell the letter, her mouth dropped open in amazement. She smiled. She asked, “Was that really from Pink Sweetie?” She said, “I should write back.” Then she got quiet. She stood up, walked out the screen door into the back yard, and sat on a rock. When I found her ten minutes later, she was crying quietly. “I miss Pink Sweetie,” she sobbed, when I asked what was wrong.

The crying and missing continued at regular intervals over the next few days.

One month earlier, it was Fiona who was teary after a trip to California to visit her paternal grandparents. “I miss Grandmommy!” she wailed daily.

And two weeks ago, we had 16 trees taken down in our yard, a concession to our gradual realization that the huge, beautiful trees growing mere feet from the house prevented other vegetation from surviving, brought swarms of mosquitoes, and ruined the roof and deck — in addition to being potentially dangerous.

But our daughters, who’ve read and watched The Lorax numerous times, were indignant. They were especially grief-stricken over an enormous hemlock they’d named “Evergreen,” which shaded their favorite rock and had low-hanging branches from which they could swing. Before Evergreen was felled, our three oldest girls went out to hug him and tearfully say goodbye. They saved one of his branches as a memento. Whenever they play outside, they mourn, “We miss Evergreen!”

“There’s been a lot of missing in our house lately,” I observed.

“Do you miss anything, Mommy?” Fiona asked.

And thankfully the conversation suddenly shifted gears, because I had no answer.

I’m still not sure I have an answer, unless “Yes, and no” counts as an answer.

Missing, in the way that my daughters miss, strikes me as a luxury. It’s the domain of the very young and the very tenderhearted. I am neither. I don’t shed tears over inanimate objects, trees, or people who are far away. I may wish that a favorite shirt hadn’t been trashed because it developed too many holes, I may wish that certain plants had survived, I may wish that I saw distant friends and family more often. These thoughts flit through my mind like gnats and are gone seconds later. But that’s just wistful thinking, not deep missing.

I’m also fortunate, because most of the people to whom I’m closest, the people who will leave un-fillable gaps in my life, are still alive. At the moment.

So, what do I miss?

For a little over a year now, I’ve felt my heart acutely. Not in a medical sense, but an emotional one. Throughout the day, a moment will strike me and I’ll feel my heart ache, swell, bleed. I’ve never been much of a cryer, but now I cry at happy endings, sad endings, church sermons, and especially while reading children’s books.

I thought this might be postpartum hormones, but I think a more accurate term is: missing.

I miss everything, all the time.

I miss the present, even while I’m experiencing it.

Because unless you’re in the middle of a crisis, the present can be heartbreakingly beautiful, crushingly joyful.

Sit with your children watching a sunset, and along with the loveliness of that moment you’re aware of how fleeting it is. You recall previous sunsets, maybe sunsets before children, before you knew all that you know now. You think of other people in the world — those you know, and those you don’t — who are watching the same sunset while suffering pain and loss. You realize that the next time you watch a sunset with your children, it won’t be the same; you’ll all be older, and maybe pain and loss will have found you in the interim. You think further into the future, to when you’ll watch sunsets alone, to when your children will watch sunsets alone.

And you miss it all: the past, the present, and the future. Because it’s all a series of sad and happy endings, all the time.

But you don’t miss the you who didn’t think this way about every moment. Because maybe this is what it means to finally be a grownup.

“Do you miss anything, Mommy?”

That’s what I would have told her.

Going Batty

Since our family moved to Vermont from more urban environs, I’ve often thought — and sometimes said — “It’s wonderful to live in a place where our children can see a variety of wildlife in its natural habitat, where the animals around us aren’t limited to those that managed to survive having their environment paved over and built upon.”

I say this during the magical moments when my daughters are catching toads in our yard, or when they spot an owl in a tree across the street, or when a doe and her fawn run right in front of us. I find it harder to say when my husband is emptying the 857th mousetrap, or when I’m digging a deer tick out of my child’s back, or when the smell of close-range skunk drifts through the bedroom window at night.

You take the bad with the good.

Like the other day, when I entered my husband’s home office to put our one-year-old daughter down for a nap in the playpen where she’d been sleeping because we’d had weekend houseguests. The shades were pulled, the room dim, but out of the corner of my eye I saw something that made me think, “What a large moth!” As the thing reversed direction and came straight towards me, I thought, “That’s no moth, that’s a BAT!”

Click here to continue reading my latest “Faith in Vermont” column for The Addison Independent.

Dispatch from the Beach

*Photo from our second trip to Maine, with only one child. (We have no photos from our current trip!)*

Our family spent this week in a rented house on the Maine coast, as we have for four of the past six summers (the two absences were due to the summer births of babies #2 and #4). By “our family,” I mean my husband and me, our four children, and my parents. Also with us — just down the road — are my mother’s sister, her two daughters (my cousins), their husbands, and their four combined children. Assorted family members visit us throughout the week. It’s a reunion of sorts, a vacation (of sorts), and a very fun time. Our daughters look forward to Maine all year. This trip is becoming a tradition, one that’s full of memories. The first time we came here, we were living in California and I was pregnant with our first child. A lot has changed in six years.

Now that we live in Vermont, Maine is a nice place to visit for two reasons. First, it has a seacoast, which landlocked Vermont does not. (This means that my husband spends a lot of time worried about waves and rip tides, which our daughters — experienced lake and pool swimmers — only encounter here.) Also, Maine is convenient; we can get here in about 5 hours, which includes an hour break for lunch. (In other words, we arrive before the battery dies on our portable DVD player.)

But now that we live in Vermont, I’ve also noticed that our Maine vacation seems a little backwards. You see, for most people a beach vacation entails “getting away from it all,” going somewhere with “a slower pace of life.” This was certainly true the two summers when we traveled to Maine from the San Francisco Bay Area. But now…now we live “away from it all.” Finding a location with “a slower pace of life” than our small town in Vermont would entail visiting a smaller town in Vermont.

These days, the Maine beach town that we’ve always visited seems bustling, over-developed, congested. It’s filled with tourists from fancy places like Boston and New Jersey. They drive fancy, fast cars, and they don’t stop when they see you waiting to cross the street. Enormous new beach “cottages” are being constructed on every square foot of land. The only bookstore in town closed down and became the 57th tacky souvenir shop. And 30 minutes of our 5-hour drive to Maine are spent inching along in traffic on the three-mile stretch between the interstate and our rental house.

If it sounds like I’m cranky and complaining, I’m really not. Maine may no longer be the idyllic retreat that it once seemed, but it’s always fun to be somewhere other than home for a time. The beaches are beautiful. We get to visit with family whom we rarely see the rest of the year. Maine offers us new experiences and sights, like lighthouses and lobster boats and saltwater taffy (which, in one hilarious episode this summer, my oldest daughter tried, disliked, and then was unable to spit out. “It’h sthicky!” she cried, bent over the trashcan and clawing at her mouth.)

This particular summer, I’ve noticed something else backwards about our trip to Maine: For some strange reason, being at the beach brings out the best behavior in my daughters. For instance, our first morning here my two oldest girls woke up at the crack of dawn, as is their custom. But instead of bursting into our bedroom and demanding water or the toilet, I heard them walk quietly downstairs. Then I heard clanking noises, which immediately alarmed me. Surveying the situation from the top of the staircase, I saw that they’d gone downstairs, fetched one of the rental house’s games, set it up in the living room, and were now happily engaged in a round of “Connect 4.”

I tiptoed back to bed.

That might have been just a blip, a temporary foray into maturity. But after breakfast that same morning, my three oldest daughters slipped upstairs. Ten minutes later they emerged. They were dressed. Their hair was done. Their teeth were brushed. And, as they proudly showed us, they’d cleaned their rooms and made their beds. These are the very things that I spend an hour hounding them to do every morning back home.

“Girls,” I exclaimed, “I’m so proud of you! This is wonderful! But just tell me something: Why don’t you act this way when we’re at home?”

“Mommy, we’re on vacation!” one of my daughters replied, as if that explained it all.

And maybe it does.

My Summer By the Pool

“If you value your life, don’t do hockey,” they said.

I heard that advice from multiple parents after our family moved to Vermont. Never mind that our daughters were still too young to participate in organized sports, or that they’d never once displayed the slightest interest in or aptitude for hockey; the advice came unsolicited: “Hi, I’m Susie. Don’t let your kids play hockey!”

I believe the warnings against hockey stem from a combination of the heavy and expensive equipment, the rigorous practice schedule, and the hours of weekend travel to tournaments. But I can’t be sure, because I don’t know any hockey families personally — perhaps because they’re either in the throes of or recovering from hockey season.

Nobody warned me about swimming.

Click here to continue reading my latest “Faith in Vermont” column for The Addison Independent.

Lessons From This School Year

As I sit at my computer to write this, there is exactly one more week of school in Addison County; when this column appears, my daughters will have been on summer vacation for approximately 15 hours. Between now and then there are picnics and potlucks and packing up. My oldest daughter’s Kindergarten will have “Move Up Day,” when she will meet her new First Grade teacher. My second daughter will participate in a preschool graduation ceremony, during which we will celebrate her ability to play, do crafts, and sit in a circle for 15 minutes. (Really, I see no need to continue her education.)

This year — our first in the Addison County public school system — has been a wonderful school year for our family. In August, we’ll send two daughters to public school, while their younger sister begins preschool; we’ve gotten our toes wet, and soon we’ll be wading in deep. So now seems like a good time to reflect on the valuable lessons our family has learned this school year.

Click here to continue reading my latest “Faith in Vermont” column in The Addison Independent.

The Bugs Are Back!

A little less than a month ago, in early May, it finally felt safe to declare Addison County in a state of full-blown spring. All the signs were there: we’d stopped burning wood in the stove at night, we’d cut our getting-out-the-door time in half by omitting hats and gloves and boots (and sometimes even coats!), we’d hung the hammock and put the potted plants back outside, and we’d replaced the screens on the doors and windows. Whenever we returned home from errands or school, our daughters raced from the minivan right into the yard to blow bubbles, climb rocks, chalk the walkway, ride bikes — and even, one glorious afternoon, frolic on the Slip-n-Slide.

For a full week, our family reveled in the renewal of our outdoor paradise. Then, one afternoon, I noticed that small, black things were flying around my head. As I waved them away with my hands, I saw that my daughters were also flailing their arms in front of their faces. And then, I felt that old, familiar pinch; heard that old, familiar buzzzzz — along with my daughters’ shrieks as they raced for the house.

Oh yeah, THAT.

Click here to continue reading about our springtime visitors to Vermont in my latest “Faith in Vermont” column for The Addison Indpendent.

Teaching Our Kids to Cheer

A couple of weeks ago, our phone rang right after dinner. On the other end was a voice belonging to a 7-year-old boy we know.

“I was wondering if you could come to my baseball game this Friday?” he asked.

He’d recently started practicing with our town’s Little League baseball team, the Middlebury Meteors. That Friday they’d be playing their first game, against the Cornwall Cougars.

When a 7-year-old asks you to attend his first baseball game, you go to the game.

Click here to continue reading my latest “Faith in Vermont” column for The Addison Independent.

Celebrating The Good Stuff: Thoughts on Motherhood

The question started following me around early this spring: What will my daughters think if they read this blog some day?

Oddly enough, this isn’t something I’d spent much time considering. When I began this blog, our girls were so young that the idea of them ever reading independently seemed impossibly distant. In any event, I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve written here. (When I was growing up, my mother advised, “Never say something that you wouldn’t want to see splashed across the front page of The New York Times.” That’s a pretty high standard, but I try to apply it to what I write and publish online.)

Now that my kindergartener sits down and reads entire books to her sisters, it’s clear that it won’t be long before my daughters can read my own writing.

In a way, I see my writing as a gift I can give them; a chance to know me in ways that I can’t verbalize, a chance to see what I thought and felt at various points when they were young. But I also worry that this blog may present them with an overly negative view of my experience of motherhood. Much of what I share here about my life as a mother is the hard stuff, the embarrassing stuff, the “bad mommy” stuff, the snarky stuff.

There are good reasons for that. This would be a profoundly boring blog (to everybody but the grandparents) if each post began, “The girls did the cutest thing today!” It would also make people feel bad; in my opinion, nobody’s helped much by hearing about how wonderful your life is. The real opportunities to connect come around the things that are hard, embarrassing, and even a little ugly. (Although the popularity of Pinterest may prove me wrong on this, but I don’t do Pinterest because I suspect it would make me feel bad).

Another reason for the view of motherhood presented here is that this blog is, in many ways, my therapy: my chance to sit down for an hour of peace after a morning with my girls and hash out my thoughts. I try to tell the truth, and during that hour of peace my thoughts are not usually full of glowing maternal bliss.

And I hope that knowing the truth — that I struggled, felt insecure and guilty, doubted myself, got depressed — will one day help my girls when they feel the same way. Just as it’s hard to relate to a perfect blog, it’s hard to relate to a perfect mother. Should they feel any doubt on that score, it’s all here in black and white.

But, reading this blog, you may have the impression that without naptime, bedtime, and coffee, my life would be intolerable. While that may be true most days, that’s not the whole picture. I left out chocolate.

Okay, seriously: This Mother’s Day, I’ve decided to NOT make it all about me, to NOT focus on accepting the gratitude and pampering of my family, and instead to celebrate by feeling deeply grateful for my children, these four girls who are the reason I’m a mother.

DISCLAIMER: I don’t love Mother’s Day. I’m aware that it can be an uncomfortable and even painful day for women who don’t or can’t have children. I do not intend what I’m about to say to feel alienating to anybody. I do not think that being a mother is the Ultimate Thing. Mothers are not superior to other people; they’re just regular women who’ve reproduced, as women have been doing forever.

But here is what I want my daughters to know, without condition or sarcasm:

I love being a mother.

Motherhood was never one of my life ambitions. It never figured prominently in my future plans. When I first became pregnant, it was mostly because it seemed like the right time to try it; “everyone else” was having kids, why not us?

Someone once told me that the moment her child was born she felt a “massive love explosion.”

I did not feel a massive love explosion. I felt terrified and confused, because I’d just had a 3-pound baby by emergency c-section two weeks early, and I was strung out on magnesium sulfate and needed a blood transfusion and it was slowly dawning on me that I had almost died and that my baby was going to need a lot of special care.

The massive love explosion built up slowly. Now, I feel a massive love explosion for my daughters at some point every day. I also feel terrified and confused. Daily.

But I have loved motherhood, with all its terror and confusion, more than I could ever have imagined. Next to marrying Erick, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. And being a mother has been, hands-down, my favorite job.

Some of what I love about being a mother are the things you hear often: That it’s made me less selfish, and therefore more exhausted, dirtier, achier, and happier. That it’s taught me more about love than any other relationship, because as a mother you spend a lifetime caring for people who are often completely dependent on you and also completely ungrateful. That I love the noise and chaos; even though it often feels like too much, on the rare occasion when two or more girls are gone for several hours, I miss them.

But beyond those things, I love being my daughters’ mother.

You are each so unique. I know where you came from, but I have no idea where you came from. Parts of you are like us, but you have always been your very own people. Being your mother gives me a front-row seat to your lives, and that’s the most fun of all.

But having a front-row seat to your lives means admitting that I’m not always going to be up on stage with you. Motherhood is a slow process of separation, from the very beginning. Every year we say goodbye for longer times, longer distances. My job is to prepare you to leave.

And that’s another reason why I’m sometimes snarky, sarcastic, quick to dwell on what’s hard or embarrassing. We do that to protect our hearts when we know that the people we love so deeply are also people we’re going to have to let go.

Happy Mother’s Day to Fiona, Campbell, Georgia, and Abigail. I am grateful every day that the four of you were entrusted to me for the time we have.