When my children were babies, I worried about how they would get along when they moved out of my bedroom and into their own big cribs in the next room. Now things are different. In just a few weeks, my four children will be scattered over three continents, and I am not worried. Not about them.
I'm not so sure about me.For me, motherhood has been a wonderful adventure. Its skills are learned on-the-job, because nobody tells you what it's really like. No one warned me how fragile and dependent babies are or how time-consuming.
But it's also true that nobody told me I was getting more than children - that in just a few years, I would acquire the four best friends I was ever to have.
And now when I feel I am graduating from the undergraduate phase of motherhood, I must thank these four friends for the past 25 years. Like Bob Hope, I am grateful for the memories:
The times my kids played hookey from school to go with me to listen to a lecture by Ray Bradbury or to San Francisco for a performance of "Les Miserables." For the year I was named "Field Trip Mother" because I loved to play hookey from work and do things like eat chocolate chip cookies while riding the Heber Creeper with 30 or so fifth-graders.
The time my youngest son - who, at age 8, had a lively interest in where babies come from - nearly gave me heart failure in our bishop's office. It was the new bishop's first baptism interview, and he was prompting Mike to answer the question: What does your daddy need to have in order to baptize you?
"It's something your daddy has but your mommy doesn't. It starts with the letter `p'," the man said, innocently, not knowing Mike and I had just had one of those anatomically correct conversations about boys and girls. I waited what seemed like forever, but Mike finally came through with the right answer: priesthood. And I breathed again.
The time my middle son unknowingly gave me a wonderful gift when he answered a different kind of question. Jeremy, at about 9, came home one day from school and said "Mom, did you know there are mothers who don't go to work at all, they just stay at home all day?"
Having no idea what the answer would be, I said "Yes, I did know. Would you want me to do that?" He thought about it and finally said, to my great relief, "No, I like you just the way you are." It was the only time I was ever thankful for Mr. Rogers.
For the years when I took three children with me to do interviews, to climb on the space shuttle and listen to politicians speak because I was "working at home." For the many visits to emergency rooms with injured children and the times in later years when they returned the favor by driving me to the hospital with broken bones after I took up soccer as a midlife hobby.
For the combination senior trip/family vacation when I shared a two-bedroom house on an Oregon beach with eight teenagers for a week.
For the Shakespeare festivals when we laughed through George Bernard Shaw and tried to keep each other awake through "King Lear" then drove up a dark, winding road to Brian Head under the most starry sky I'd ever seen.
For my oldest son, Jason, who has offered to help put his younger brother through medical school. And for Jason who, at a younger age, decided against getting an ear pierced after I offered to do it myself with a needle, ice cube and a potato but did let me bleach his long hair during a rebellious stage (his, not mine).
For my daughter, Christy, who turned down scholarship offers to Vassar, Wellesley and Bryn Mawr because she didn't want to be that far from home and then graduated with honors from the University of Utah and decided to take off for London.
For my oldest and youngest sons who taught me friends are more important than grades - and they last longer, too.
For attending concerts, ballet performances, museum and art exhibits, movies and plays with me instead of going with their friends. For the road races Jeremy ran with me - and all those when he ran way ahead of me.
For the winter we all learned to ski. For all the basketball and soccer tournaments - the goals and baskets made and missed, the hurt feelings and moments of triumph.
Now it's time to move on to the graduate school of motherhood. For my four best friends, the change will be easy; for me a little harder. But if the next 25 years are nearly as good as the past 25 have been, it will be a wonderful time. Thanks, kids.