P.S. Happy Mother's Day!

This year for Mother's Day I thought I'd write a little letter to my past self:

Dear Self (circa 2008),

Right now you are the Perfect Parent.  You know exactly what to do in every situation.  There is no problem that you are not equal to.  No puzzle to which you do not hold the key.  Be kind but firm!  You say.  Be consistent! You say.  Be careful which battles you pick, but once you've picked it WIN IT!  You say.  You sympathize knowingly with the struggles you see young parents facing.  Ah yes, you say, if they would simply...

Little do you suspect that in a few short years you will be sitting outside a church house in Australia (far, far from your family) puzzling with your son's nursery teacher about how to help him settle in.  You will cry on the shoulders of empathetic new friends while your theories and intentions lie in shambles at your feet.  You will need the reassurance of those same friends to gather those theories about you to cover the vulnerability and inadequacy you feel in the face of the task before you.  You'll pray, you'll plead, you'll read, you'll worry, you'll think you've succeeded just in time to see yourself fail and feel you're a failure just in time to see yourself succeed.

In short, you will come to discover that mothering is at once the most wonderful, horrifying, joyful, infuriating, simple, mysterious, energizing, and exhausting venture that you have ever taken on.  You will see yourself in every mother you have ever looked upon with a critical eye, and you will feel ashamed.  But you will also see in yourself the mothers that you have looked up to and admired.  And that will sustain you more than you can imagine.  You will thank Heaven above for your own mother and for all of the mothers in your life.  You will look up to them more than ever before.  You will want to be like them.  Be easy on your children, they're learning.  Be easy on yourself, you're learning too.

Love,
Your 2012 Been-through-a-few-in-the-school-of-hard-knocks-they-call-Motherhood Self