5/26/2004 07:38:39 PM|||Amy|||I think sometimes about how my children will regard me when they are older and not quite so innocent. I think about how I regard my own mother, and while I love her - I hope very much that my relationship with my daughters is healthier than the one I share with her. I think about what I can do now to minimize the damage I might do them - either through my own needs or just carelessness. I think about how one day they might look back on their childhoods with disappointment or anger, and I wonder if I will realize it. If I do realize that they are angry with me for what I did or didn't do, will it be because they no longer want anything to do with me?

I talk with my friends about their relationships with their parents, and I think that when my children reach adulthood - I might very well be hurt by them. Having children makes you vulnerable to limitless hurt and to undying pain. When they are as young as mine are now, you worry if you are giving them all the proper tools to be healthy adults, if you are doing a good enough job raising them. You worry that somehow they will cross the path of a monster and that monster will hurt them, and then - if it happens - what will you do? The monster could be a car crash, a playground accident, the hateful words of another, or the hateful actions of another - it could even be the psychological traumas you yourself caused.

I know better now - better than I know anything else- that I will fight those monsters away from my children until I am dead, a knowledge common to parenthood. But, how can I assure that they will grow up to be healthy and happy? I don't think I can. I have to give them everything I know, and hope for the best.

I am getting ready to do something for which they may never be able to forgive me, but I am soldiering on and remaining grounded in the certainty that I have exhausted all other options. I have come to the terrible conclusion that if I can find the courage to take this step that they will ultimately be better off. I will be better off. I hope. |||108561928541738794|||The Terrible Fears of Parenthood