I was a very young bride.  17 years old.  Yup, my mom had to sign the marriage license for me.  Just for the record, I was a high school graduate and almost as mature as most brides these days! I was 21 when Deena was born, but coming from a large family I did have lots of childcare experience.  These were the days of cloth diapers that required special folding and sharp pins – most babies got jabbed a few times for sure so I wasn’t surprised to do this myself to all my babies! 

But poor Deena did suffer from my new-momness and also my terrible klutziness that exists to this day.  Some of the worst events?  Well when she was about 9 months old, I was bouncing her while she was sitting on my shoulders and when I tried to slide her off, I kind of lost grip of her and dropped her about 3 feet to the floor, knocking her wind out! That was pretty scary!  Notice I didn’t say I dropped her on her head.  Then another time when we were building our new house (which was so exciting) – we had let Deena roll around in her walker (no longer an approved baby item) and forgot to block off the stairway and down she rolled!  Luckily again, no head trauma!  But one of my worst mishaps happened on a grocery shopping trip.  I had successfully completed the shopping with about 1 year old Deena in tow, got the groceries put into the supercab truck which we were driving at the time, buckled Deena into her carseat, and then as I attempted to push the cart away from the truck, that big heavy truck door swung shut – and my baby was locked in there because I had left the keys in the truck!!  What panic!  No cel phones in those days, no one near by to help me, so my only option was to dash back into Safeway, hope my baby would not start wailing and plead assistance from the clerks to phone my husband Don and get him to come and unlock the door!  Thank goodness P.A. is a small city and it didn’t take him long to fly downtown and rescue us!  I felt like the world’s worst mother – ever.  And dear little Deena just sat there in her carseat calm as can be through the whole event.  I did learn from that experience that baby stays with you till you are all done the other stuff!

If I am trying to remember a mommy victory from when the kids were small – well good luck with that one.  You always think that you are going to remember every event of your life, every person who passed through it.  Think again.  It just does not work out that way.  Fortunately, I blogged the old-fashioned way - in a written journal every day.  Now as I search for events in those old books, sometimes it baffles me how you can totally forget things that occurred or people who were a part of your life.  I will read something to Don and say do you remember this?  Or say to him, do you remember who Michelle was, apparently I visited her in the hospital with her new baby girl?  Sometimes neither of us can recall the memory!  You ladies will be glad in the future if you are writing these times of your lives down because they do help to bring back to mind things that are long forgotten!  So my mommy victory?   Raising three terrific kids in a world where they can easily be led astray.  I’m grateful that the choices we made for them in family, education, faith, the arts and sports have made them the well-rounded adults they are today!

This is the thing about the mommy brain. 

It doesn’t turn off when your kids reach adulthood.  You will still pine for their happiness, their health, their safety. 

You will slip up and tell them what or how they should be doing something and they will give you the evil eye and then you remember, oh yeah, they’re grown-up now, guess they can figure that out themselves.  This is a difficult thing to turn off. 

So when your mom offers unsolicited advice or is overly protective, you can let it in one ear and out the other if you like; just remember, the tables turn too soon!