Some Thoughts on Parenting

Yesterday Cassidy turned four.
It hardly seems possible.
My darling girl, my wild child. Trouble incarnate.

As nearly opposite to myself as seems humanly possible,
Cass is perpetually filled with such joy and laughter
that she can hardly keep it contained.

It bubbles forth
and touches everyone around her.

She makes me believe that perhaps,
I am doing something right.

So today, some thoughts on parenting.

“My mother had a great deal of trouble with me,

but I think she enjoyed it.”

-Mark Twain

“Sylvia thought how all parents

wanted an impossible life for their children-

happy beginning, happy middle, happy ending.

No plot of any kind.

What uninteresting people would result

if parents got in their way.”

Karen Joy Fowler

“A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful,

full of wonder and excitement.

It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision,

that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring,
is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.

If I had influence with the good fairy

who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children

I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be

a sense of wonder

so indestructible that it would last throughout life,

as an unfailing antidote
against the boredom and disenchantments of later years,

the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial,

the alienation from the sources
of our strength.”

-Rachel Carson