Saturday, November 04, 2006

The Evolving Roles of Mother

According to a post on her fabulous website , I recently caused my daughter to cry from happiness. (Well, at least get teary-eyed.) I'm pleased to have made it to this phase of our relationship. I've caused her to cry a number of times in our lives, and most of them were NOT from happiness. And I'm very sorry for all of those times, except for the (extremely rare) ones where she was being really naughty and spanking was the inevitable consequence.

But---I vividly remember several instances where the tears were a result of my careless, rude blurting out of the first (usually self-centered) thing that popped into my head without regard to her view or feelings. And these are the ones I wish to officially apologize for now and for the remaining years of our lives...hopefully there will be fewer and fewer of these events. They shall remain unenumerated because I'm confident that there are more instances of which I am unaware than any that I could recount.

Here's to a future of more happy tears!

1 comment:

FoxyJ said...

A while ago we had a Relief Society Lesson on families and the question of why families are part of the plan was posed. Why do we come to earth as children and have to grow into adults? I think one answer I've pondered a lot is that someone pointed out that families give us the chance to play multiple roles over time. It's hard to remember being a child once you're a parent, but the nice thing is that our roles are always evolving. Now that I'm a parent, I'm much more forgiving of my parents and other people who are parents. I've had bad days too and there's nothing worse than seeing the little person who adores you crumple because you yelled at here for knocking over the lamp (personal experience). Life is ever evolving and we get many chances to try again. As long as we keep slowly inching our way upward things will be OK.