The article that made me cry
I've found this article at Newsweek Special Issue from 2000.
And while I couldn't stop reading it, there were certain things, that made me cry.
Well, maybe it's just me who's unstable emotionally :)
Anyways, it can be found here:
http://mommytown.blogspot.com/2008/05/mothers-day-words-of-wisdom-from-anna.html
or here:
http://www.inspirationforthespirit.com/inspiration/poetrywriting/readingroom/quindlen-spock.html.
As for the words, that touched me so, here they are:
* 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 people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinions of them...
* the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible...
* Raising children is presented at first as a true-false set, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything.
* 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.
* How silly it all seems now, the obsessing about language acquisition and physical milestones, the riding the waves of normal, gifted, hyperactive, all those labels that reduced individuality to a series of cubbyholes.
* I knew that there were mothers who had worried with good reason, that there were children who would have great challenges to meet. We were lucky; ours were not among them. Nothing horrible or astonishing happened.
* Mostly ours were the ordinary everyday terrors and miracles of raising a child, and ours children's challenges the old familiar ones of learning to live as themselves in the world. The trick was to get past my fears, my ego and my inadequacies to help them do that.
* 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 walk just fine.
Here I started crying. He can walk just fine. All I ask is that she will be able to read. Nothing more. All the rest are details. Can be fixed. Can be left as is. But reading?! What do you do if you can't read? But she can, she can! She does it. She improves herself all the time.
Please, I just want her to read. And then to know what she wants to do. You can live without physics, or chemistry, or biology, or even mathematics, but how it's possible to live without reading? All we do all the time, just like walking - it's read and write, write and read. We don't even pay an attention to this.
To get past my fears, my ego and my inadequacies to help them do that
* Believe me, mistakes were made. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language - mine, not theirs. The day 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). I did not allow them to watch "The Simpsons" for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?
* 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.
* And look how it all turned out. I would up with three people I like best in the world, who have done more then 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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I wanna write! I wanna write things so that other people would be touched by my words! I can do it! And I'm gonna do it! Where is the closest "Intuitive Writing" course?
The victory is mine.