03-04-02 - 7:58 a.m.
i've been thinking about an ad campaign-i think it was for the army, and it went something like 'the toughest job you'll ever love'. this applies to parenting as well; a thankless, frustrating, endless work in progress that forces you, like it or not, to face your faults and fuck-ups and failings. on a good day, parenthood is second-nature, like breathing. they grow and blossom and grow more and it swells your heart with pride and, in some mysterious way, completes you. the rest of it is a battle of wills and a struggle for understanding and patience and more heartache than you deserve. and no matter how much you guide or give or love or provide, you can never be what your children have the right to be; a flawed human with hopes and dreams and demons and problems of your own. i learned this lesson hard and late; caring for my dying mother. Changing her soiled diapers, our relationship had come full circle and i saw her for what she was; not just the mom who loved me on disappointing and difficult terms of her own, but a remarkable woman with hopes and dreams and demons and history i'd never bothered to explore.