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Message |
    
Joan
Supporter
Username: Joancrystal
Post Number: 7422
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, May 13, 2006 - 7:25 pm: | 
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Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms and persons with Moms who take a moment to read this thread. May you have a really special day. |
tulip
Citizen
Username: Braveheart
Post Number: 3510
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, May 13, 2006 - 7:45 pm: |
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Happy Mother's Day to all!!! |
Scully
Citizen
Username: Scully
Post Number: 458
Registered: 8-2005
| | Posted on Sunday, May 14, 2006 - 1:52 am: |
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I'd like to third that!
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BGS
Supporter
Username: Bgs
Post Number: 995
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, May 14, 2006 - 6:16 am: |
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Joan you beat me to it...
I post the following article for all to read...it really spoke to me and I offer this as a gift to you all...
Hope that this day is whatever each of you needs it to be.
Hugs,
BGS
> On Being Mom
> by Anna Quindlen,
> Newsweek Columnist and Author
>
> 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 ducky 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 Brazelton., 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 child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling 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. 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....
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Wendy
Supporter
Username: Wendy
Post Number: 2469
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, May 14, 2006 - 10:02 am: |
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Thanks for posting that BGS. It was great to read again! These days I probably should read it every morning! |
tulip
Citizen
Username: Braveheart
Post Number: 3514
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, May 14, 2006 - 11:25 am: |
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I do wish I had taped their voices at different ages, and made more home movies. |
ajc
Citizen
Username: Ajc
Post Number: 5111
Registered: 9-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, May 14, 2006 - 11:52 am: |
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Thanks BGS, Dads enjoy reading these things too... Happy Mother's Day ladies. |
mooewe
Citizen
Username: Mooewe
Post Number: 342
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, May 14, 2006 - 11:55 am: |
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That was excellent, BGS, thanks.
On a lighter note.....this has been making the email rounds, and may even be posted on another thread, but if not...enjoy!
 |
mooewe
Citizen
Username: Mooewe
Post Number: 343
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, May 14, 2006 - 12:05 pm: |
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That didn't work....try this:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/videos/mothers-day-picture.html |
Soparents
Citizen
Username: Soparents
Post Number: 322
Registered: 5-2005
| | Posted on Sunday, May 14, 2006 - 12:15 pm: |
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PAUL REVERE'S MOTHER: "I don't care where you think you have to go, young man. Midnight is past your curfew!"
MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY'S MOTHER: "I don't mind you having a garden, Mary, but does it have to be growing under your bed?"
MONA LISA'S MOTHER: "After all that money your father and I spent on braces, Mona, that's the biggest smile you can give us?"
HUMPTY DUMPTY'S MOTHER: "Humpty, if I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times not to sit on that wall. But would you listen to me? Noooo!"
COLUMBUS' MOTHER: "I don't care what you've discovered, Christopher. You still could have written!"
BABE RUTH'S MOTHER: "Babe, how many times have I told you to quit playing ball in the house! That's the third broken window this week!"
MICHELANGELO'S MOTHER: "Mike, can't you paint on walls like other children? Do you have any idea how hard it is to get that stuff off the ceiling?"
NAPOLEON'S MOTHER: "All right, Napoleon. If you aren't hiding your report card inside your jacket, then take your hand out of there and prove it!"
CUSTER'S MOTHER: "Now, George, remember what I told you - don't go biting off more than you can chew!"
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S MOTHER: "Again with the stovepipe hat, Abe? Can't youjust wear a baseball cap like the other kids?"
BARNEY'S MOTHER: "I realize strained plums are your favorite, Barney, but you're starting to look a little purple."
MARY'S MOTHER: "I'm not upset that your lamb followed you to school, Mary,but I would like to know how he got a better grade than you."
BATMAN'S MOTHER: "It's a nice car, Bruce, but do you realize how much the insurance is going to be?"
GOLDILOCKS' MOTHER: "I've got a bill here for a busted chair from the Bear family. You know anything about this, Goldie?"
LITTLE MISS MUFFET'S MOTHER: "Well, all I've got to say is if you don't get off your tuffet and start cleaning your room, there'll be a lot more spiders around here!"
ALBERT EINSTEIN'S MOTHER: "But, Albert, it's your senior picture. Can't you do something about your hair? Styling gel, mousse, something...?"
GEORGE WASHINGTON'S MOTHER: "The next time I catch you throwing money across the Potomac, you can kiss your allowance good-bye!"
JONAH'S MOTHER: "That's a nice story, but now tell me where you've really been for the last three days."
SUPERMAN'S MOTHER: "Clark, your father and I have discussed it, and we've decided you can have your own telephone line. Now will you quit spending somuch time in all those phone booths?"
THOMAS EDISON'S MOTHER: "Of course I'm proud that you invented the electric light bulb, Thomas. Now turn off that light and get to bed!"
And from me, to all MOL Mothers and Mothers to be, have a very happy, love filled day. xx |
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