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All three kids are actually in this photo, along with my last stepmother.  Josh is in the foreground ~ canoe trip in the backcountry of Algonquin (Ontario).  (I had told my dad after a couple of trips that we needed to schedule in days off for relaxation!)

 

 

Getting closer to that birthday . . .

Like all families, we had our difficulties.  During my forties, as my kids moved through elementary and middle school and into high school, there were some bumps in the road.  OK, more like craters and mountains.  We had some triumphs with our careers and our children's lives ~ Josh was able to live in France for a year, for instance ~ and we also experienced some real disasters.

I have no idea why some kids glide into adulthood and others careen forward and backward and sideways.  No idea at all.  I do know that the latter path is  hard on parents and siblings.

 

A friend of mine spoke to me in desperation one day.  One of her children was in serious trouble; a colleague's son had just been admitted to an Ivy League University.  Another colleague, congratulating the other mother, had exclaimed, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree!"

"What kind of tree does that make me?" my friend queried sadly.

"A gorgeous one,"  I said.  "There is no telling or predicting this s--t."

Here's what I finally concluded.  Some parents are luckier than others.

So profound.

Some parents get to engage in what on the surface seems to be a nonstop sequence of applause for prizes captured, championships won, scholarships granted.  (Even for those parents, the surface is often merely just that ~ a glimmering sheen concealing family traumas and dramas.)  Others are dealt the early morning calls from the police station, the unexpected pregnancies, the new jangle of acronymns ~  AA, NA, etc. ~ the afternoons in trauma centers or the mornings in chemo rooms, the string of failing grades, the endless sequence of 504 meetings.

We got a hefty dose of both sorts of categories.

Eventually I came to believe that sometimes we are offered opportunities to learn more ways of loving deeply than are usually available. 

I think my song for those years might be Hotel California ~ "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."