As our family went around the room stating what they are thankful for on our traditional Thanksgiving dinner this year, so many thoughts ran through my head. I loved the courage of everyone to speak up and share something thoughtful. I love the gift of family and tradition and good food and sharing and the love that we have in our family. I listened as others stated they were thankful for being accepted by our family, to have traditions with family that others are not as lucky to have, to have made personal accomplishments, for good food, for family, and my Aunt Jan spoke with heavy tears stating she was thankful to sit and listen to the chatter and the sharing because my Grandma loved to do that, especially in her later years: just to sit and listen to her family around her talk and share and laugh. And my aunt went on to say she was thankful that I was carrying on a tradition that meant something to all of us in one way or another, and also a way to keep our family carrying on what meant the most to Grandma: togetherness.
In those moments, all of the things I was thankful for flooded my mind and heart. I was so thankful for thankful people, and in a deep way that I don't feel I can express enough through words alone, I am thankful for generations. For parents for having children. For watching children be raised right in front of our eyes. I am watching Farrah learn so many little things, all of the things, from us.
Growing up, we are under the belief that parents are professional adults. That they have all the answers. That they knew going into parenthood just exactly how to handle situations, punishments, rewards, holiday traditions... But as I am figuring out, my parents were just learning as they went. They were questioning themselves. They were talking with their friends and families and strangers. They were sharing their stories and comparing themselves to others. They were teaching us the very best they knew how.
I know moms who stay at home with their babies, moms who work full-time jobs and wish they were able to spend more time and focus more attention to their children, moms who keep the same day-to-day schedule right down to bath times with no exceptions, moms who are taking their children Farrah's age and younger to the movies, moms who are divorced and have their children a portion of the time and have to share them on holidays, and moms who are going into this parenting thing scared and alone.
I went into motherhood knowing my baby wasn't going to have the normal infancy and childhood with having two older stepsiblings who keep us on the move (sports events, school on Thursday mornings, pick-ups and drop-offs, etc). It bothered me because I thought it was going to bother her. What I'm learning as I go is that the little things that I wish I could change and control, the non-ideal portions of our lives, aren't necessarily bad things and they do not prevent our children from being happy and normal and healthy. The lives we live are the lives that we have to offer our children. It's so natural to want to give our babies the most perfect and beautiful and fulfilling lives that we can possibly imagine. What we don't realize is that WE DO. We do provide our babies with the very best, because we give them our very best. There is nothing more that our children would ever want except our very best for them.
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