A Truly Powerful Blogger Mom

I am ashamed to call myself a writer.
I have seen the power of a mom blog, and she is awesome.

YOU need to see this as well, over at: http://buggydoo.blogspot.com/2006/03/letter-to-alex-and-chris-twelve-years.html

She wrote an "open letter" into the future for her 2 boys. My son is 12, and I am having him read it tonight. He can learn from this. He is ready. And teaching our children early on-repeatedly- about the kind of people we expect them to be, hope they will be, and want to see them become is important.
Saying I love you everyday is important.
Saying I believe in you every day is important.
Trying to remember everything we want from ourselves for our kids is often impossible, and one reason that mom guilt is more prevelent than episiotomies in America. We have a LOT to put into these few short years. The recipe changes with the day, with the situation, with the memories we can pull up on any given occassion. Heavy on the love one day, hard on the cleaning another, throwing in the reminders for pet care and responsibility and joy in between the lessons on how mommy screams when she is really tired and her anitdepressants aren't working and she can't find any chocolate.


So, often times, I am hoping that I just haven't failed miserably. Then I read something as perfetly perfect as buggydoo, and all my years as a writer, all the years as a mom, seem like I have forgotten how much there is to learn. I have told my boy what I want him to grow up to be, and hope I said it just HALF as well as she did.
There are so many things to say to them, and just no space to get it all in the bowl.

Respect, justice, healthy eathing, dental care, reading, friendship, karate, cleaning under the beds, kindness, dishwashing, citizenship, empathy, sex, organizational skills, driving, pet care, strangers and safety and responsiblity and shaving and bedmaking and evaluating advertisers and respecting space and dancing and piano and baseball....endless things. Picasso. History. Candlemaking.

Being a good role model might be the hardest. None of us is perfect, and we all have places in our lives we wish we had done better with, especially when it comes to raising our kids. I do think, however, that all the moms I know hope their boys turn out as well as buggydoo's ideals.

We all are out here, everyday. We get dressed, get the kids off to school (or fed and set for morning play), and in between the chores and the meals we raise children that will someday rule the world. We raise the people who will come to hold us as we age.
I hope my son learns those lessons. I wish I could have said it as eloquently as she did.
This is the sound of cyber clapping.
Congratulations mom.