Sublime

She is what I call the Teaching Mommy, meaning that she is there to model this, to show your adult self how to do it.

As adults, we strive to cultivate the character traits that might have rescued our parents.

Kindness

“Did I give up my life and friends and boobs to stay home and babysit?” I ask. “Seriously, is it babysitting when I do it, or just you?”

There is an excess of mom-wine-drinking jokes and poop-on-the-clothes-at-work jokes and a lot of judging jokes about bad mothering. But none of these things afford mothers, who are literally carrying humanity forward around their necks, the simple grace of a change of hands.

Children, however, don’t like having to be hyper-competent. So it’s not surprising that Charlotte wants me to be the mother for her now. I

‘Little victories,’ my mother used to say, and which I then said aloud, to myself.

As a creative soul, a maker of things, and a person pursuing your dreams, you can’t afford to be a pessimist.