If I don't have kids, what's the main thing you think I would be missing?
Well, it's really fun to share experiences.
It's really fun to see the world together.
And when you're my age, you won't have you.
But even if I lost you all tragically somehow, it would've been worth it to me.
You kids growing up, and making mudpies, and just the funny interactions.
Those memories are so precious to me.
Somebody very wise once told me that babies grow up in spite of their parents.
I truly believe that.
I think we made so many sort of practical mistakes when we were new parents.
I don't think babies are that fragile.
As a parent you're more of an observer of your child and their life and their choices
and their thought process and the way they do things.
You don't want to change that.
You watch it, and observe it and embrace it, but you have to just let them be.
The only big thing when you open up the instruction manual is love your child.
The effects of not feeling loved, or that the people who are raising you don't love
you or approve of you will absolutely, completely, unequivocally damage a person for the rest
of their life.
I don't believe they ever get over it.
The hardest thing as a parent is knowing you kid is so unhappy, and you can't fix it.
I remember dropping you off at school, I think it was fourth and fifth grades, knowing you
were miserable, knowing that it was just really hard.
What were considered your disabilities as a young person, those have turned into the
best features of you and the very things that have you thriving now.
I guess what I would hope is that we didn't kill what was best in you.
Beat you down for being who you were.
The biggest thing, and maybe it was because we were in a closed adoption, was somebody
stealing you.
So I always kept you close.
If I was sweeping the kitchen floor and looking out those nice big windows to see you kids
playing and running and arguing and creating, I just thought - does it get any better?
Does it get any better than this?
Though the physical umbilical cord is cut at birth, it never is cut between a mother
and a child.
I think for me the biggest feeling in pregnancy has been that my life is not fully my own
anymore.
I've already had to make certain changes to accommodate this new life that's growing inside
me.
But that was just the tip of the iceberg.
But life is like a lot of balls in the air.
Who ever really has balance?
I'm glad we did it!
Thanks mom.
Thanks for doing it.