My kids were still quite small when I realized that the only way that I would have the time and energy to be the sort of mother than I wanted to be was to get rid of my children. Otherwise I was bound to make a hatchet job of it.
Interesting phrase: "hatchet job." I guess the idea is that if you use a big ol' hatchet instead of the precision blade that the task requires, the process will be messy. Works for me. Me as mother, I mean.
I watch my niece with her two little boys and she's an artist, a sculptor, carefully trimming here, delicately carving there, using her exacting tools with such grace and attention to detail. Whereas I, I was more like Lizzie Borden than Michelangelo, or maybe just a rusty tin woodsman, hacking and gouging, wood chips flying, splinters everywhere.
Which is not to say that the end products necessarily reflect my lack of skill. Turns out children are less like blocks of wood than those antibiotic-resistant superviruses. Thank God.
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