Reflections on Motherhood

1. I always knew my kids would grow up and move out. I just wish they had moved out closer.

2. Looking around this house, I can see that it was time for them to move out when they did. Actually, it was time for them to move out before they did. You really do outgrow a house.

3. I wonder if everything important in life assumes an air of unreality when it's over. I'm having a hard time believing I ever actually lived in Germany. I'm having a hard time believing we ever shared this house with two other people.

4. I guess that, although it was time for them to move out, I would have liked to know them better as adults before they did.

5. Rooms that seemed so big when you were small, become so small once you're big.

6. Overall, I can't think of anything I'd change in my motherhood techniques, such as they were. They weren't perfect, but they did produce two spectacular people.

7. I do wish we had played more board games as a family.

8. Once they're gone, they're gone. Even when you do see them, they have become such different people that you wonder if this is the same person you shared a life with.

9. If I had known these things when I was younger, I wonder if I would have been nicer to my mother.

10. On the other hand, I wonder if my mother would have been nicer to me, if she had realized these things when she was younger.

Happy Mother's Day.