On having children...

I discovered Storypeople in 1999, when I was dating this guy and his mom had the book on her coffee table.  I loved the weird, slightly creepy pictures and the cute, short stories that came along with them.  I loved them so much that I signed up to receive "story of the day" emails from Storypeople 6 years ago.  This morning, I received this story:

It's amazing how life and experiences just repeat itself over and over.  My mother herself was once a baby, a child, a rebellious teenager.  She would sneak out of the house, skip school, and smoke cigarettes just like I did.  And then she became a mother and I was her baby, her child, her rebellious teenager who did the exact same things she did to her mother.

It wasn't until I became an adult and a mother that I realized how tough it is to be one.  I see now how wise she was when she told me, on the day we moved for the second time in 3 years, that I will make friends again or when she told me, after one particularly rough day in school, that life beyond high school is so much more interesting.  I blew her off and accused her of not knowing me or my life or what it was like to be a teenager in the 90s.

My mother has been witness to the god-awful changes of puberty 5 times now, going through each door-slamming tantrum with aplomb.  Desmond will probably tell me one day that he hates me, he'll slam the door in my face, or sneak the car out in the middle of the night, just like I used to do to my mother.  And I'll smile and wait a few more years when he becomes an adult and a father and can look at me and tell me, "Mama, you were right."  I can't wait...