All right, so they won’t let me write anything sappy and I’ll try not to. I am tired today. I have been tired all day. I didn’t get anywhere near as much stuff done today as I wanted to. I didn’t even do anything fun, like play with Flash (now that I have found my booook) or my whack ’em tablet or vibrate columns of air. Actually haven’t done that in quite a while… Reason? Lizard Breath was home for a whirlwind long weekend and we dropped her off at Metro this morning (she texted me from SFO, so she’s home safely).

I didn’t get a whole lot of time with her. She made this trip to help orchestrate a childhood friend’s wedding. It’s okay. Between jet lag and wedding events et al, not to mention that I, uh, work, I knew I wouldn’t see much of her. But if it hadn’t been for the wedding, she wouldn’t have traveled here at all this weekend. I’ll take what I can get and I am *sure* she is a lot tireder than I am right now.

So, these are my beach urchins. Lizard in the top photo and Mouse in the tree. Liz graduated from college two years ago and works for Childhood Matters out in the Bay area, which is a non-profit dedicated to very young children and their families. Mouse will be a college senior this fall and that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

Both of my kids are/were theatre majors with anthropology minors. Gasp! Starving actresses, some people think. I dunno. My kids are not the stereotypical “I want my name in lights” wannabe leading-lady-actress-type people. They have been doing theatre forever. They learned early on that it was important to do *any* role you were assigned well, no matter how small it seemed. It is an *ensemble* out there, you guys. And they often chose to take on management-type jobs too. Stage manager or assistant director. I often think that serious theatre majors are written off too quickly. They learn a *huge* body of literature and how to effectively present it to an audience and they learn to manage and teach people too. At least my urchins did.

When I look back over the years, I am not sure how my kids turned out to be successful with a klutzy moom like me. By successful, I don’t mean making gazillions of dollars. Making it to your senior year of college without hitting any major speedbumps is being pretty successful. When people who are in the throes of toilet training or whatever ask me for advice (and they actually have, once or twice, I am not exactly the go-to girl for child-rearing advice, but some people are desperate), I can never think of specific advice. Every kid is different. What works for one sibling may not work for another one. Every family is different. What works yada yada. What always worked for me was not a specific technique for potty training (for example only). It was knowing that the problem would pass. I’d sometimes even pick a date or an age or whatever. Like, when so-and-so is 10, she will be over this. And then I’d just put my head down and do whatever I could think of to make it work. Sometimes it was pretty darn ugly. We had plenty of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days. And kee-reist, we had those right up through high school. And even beyond, sometimes. And it’ll go on. I occasionally fought knock-down, drag-out with my parents right up into my 40s. And I’ve been into it on a few occasions with The Commander now that Grandroobly is no longer around.

Am I outta steam yet? Kee-reist. The point is that we all love each other and that most childhood problems *will* go away. But life goes on and it isn’t always easy or pretty. Click here or on Liz or Mouse for urban hiking pics.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 7th, 2008 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.