parenting

One of my favorite blogs to read is Heather Armstrong's. She is honest, poetic, at times a little outrageous, and very very human. One of her favorite topics has to do with life with their nearly 2 year old daughter. She writes with the wonder of one discovering something marvelous for the first time... which of course she is.

Anyway, I was thinking about her blog and reflecting on my experience as my now 23 year old underwent this serious surgery. It is amazing how much power your child has over you. They hold your heart in their hands for the rest of your life and have the same power at age 23 that they had at 2 weeks... without a thought they can rip your heart out and stomp on it (even if they haven't yet learned to walk) and not even realize it.

Going up to the surgery, I didn't sleep well and had an over-active imagination which thought of everything that could possibly go wrong from amputating a limb because they mixed up patients to the orthognathic surgeon making a mistake and my beautiful daughter ending up looking like Jay Leno. Of course, neither happened. Still, I do find myself secretly fearing that the swelling won't go down and she'll look like a hamster with its cheeks filled with seeds for the rest of her life... and I paid for it.

Parenting is difficult... and I'm guessing it never gets easier, not even when they have long since grown up and moved out. I suspect Alexis and John will always be just below the surface of my consciousness and I hope that with each change in their lives, I too will experience the wonder of doing something amazing for the first time. I'll pretend that nothing this hard will ever happen again.