Mother's Day

Parenting is definitely the hardest job out there.  One thing about it is that you are really never off the hook.  They become adults and you are still their parent.  Certainly it is possible that your children might fire you.  I am sure that happens all the time, even if the firing lasts only minutes or hours.  There are parents who should be fired indefinitely,that is also true; those that physically and verbally abuse their children need to be kicked to the curb by their offspring if they are going to have any hope of a future life that is fulfilling to them.  There are no entrance exams to get into the club.  It is altogether too easy to become a parent and all too hard to remain one.  The other difficult lesson is that one size does not fit all children.  What works for one does not in any way guarantee that the same approach will work for the next.  So you cannot rest on your laurels if child #1 escapes drugs, disasters, and encounters with the law.  The next child might need something altogether different.  Cruelly, the children themselves think that fairness is the only way to approach them, and when you do something for one, the others have every expectation that they too will have the same benefits (but not necessarily the consequences).
This year my parenting game has been severely affected by having cancer.  Not surprisingly, my children have responded quite differently to life threatening illness in their mother, and I am just now starting to work on what I can do to help.  Before it was all more or less left to my spouse to deal with because I was just too ill much of the time to do more than attend to myself.  So that is the task between now and next Mother's Day, to better handle my job as a mother now that I have a big piece of uncertainty about my future to cope with.  Wish me luck because I am definitely going to need it.