A short note on parenting...

Here we all were, years ago. Maybe 8 years? 7? It is hard to say exactly. I am trying to gauge it by little Bret's age. Maybe she was 3 or 4 there. I pick that age because she still didn't want to sit next to anyone but me. As you can see by the brilliance of her smile (sarcasm), while she is being propped up in her dad's lap. The rest of us dutifully smiling for our part in the happy family photo. Gaige looking squished by the mere girth of the group. Josh smiling because that is what he was told to do, Brenda looking just happy to be with everyone.

Were we really this happy? No! Photos are a stressful thing. Trying to get all the kids AND adults to look at the same place and smile a natural smile at the same time? Possible an impossible feat! It is not easy to be who you "have to be" all the time on demand. Not for me, or any of my kids, I am sure.

When I look back to my parenting back then, of course I wish I knew then... I wish I was more patient. I wish my boys didn't have to take the brunt of my parent learning curve. I wish I didn't make them smile for this photo if they didn't want to smile. I wish I told them to be who you want to be no matter what anyone (including me) wants... I wish... I wish... I wish... I wish I could tell them all those things now and make it stick...

Life is very happy. It is also very sad. So after seeing that one of my own posted something on the internet about me, or maybe just the family, or both, I am inclined to post a small bit about of my own "truth..."

When Maisy the lazy bird asked Horton to sit on her egg so she could get some stuff done, little did he know she would be gone off with her own life and leave him there with her egg. He sat patiently, enduring much weather, taunting, bullying, gunpoint, etc. Then she just happend upon Horton and the egg, during her wonderful trails of vacation, as the egg was about to hatch... '"But it's MINE!" screamed the bird, when she heard the egg crack. (The work was all done. Now she wanted it back.) "It's my egg!" she sputtered. "You stole it from me! Get off of my nest and get out of my tree!"

From me to Maisy the lazy birds in my life, "When the courts require drug testing in order to regain your visitation rights, and you don't persue it, life goes on. And people eventually move, because that is what they do. And make new families out of what they have. In these modern days, if you want visitation with your child, you just have to petition the courts. Our address has been all over the internet for years. Your son's sport schedules have been all over the internet for years. I know, I google it regularily, and I have for years. No one hid anyone from anyone. You didn't persue visitation. You didn't pay child support. When you tell your adult child at his most vulnerable time of his life, "I always wanted you, they wouldn't let me see you, but I am your mother and I have always loved you best, tell me how horrible they were to you," it is a little like Maisy the lazy bird wanting her egg back after all.