Author Archives: Barbara Ross

IT Support

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The biggest challenge of working at home (or even not working, at home) is the IT support is just terrible.  Oh how I miss the days when, at the slightest mention of an issue or frustration, IT guys would come running down the hall as if their hair were on fire.

The IT team at WebCT was incredibly patient and supportive.  We had a system. They pretended to believe what I was saying, nodded sagely, disappeared with my laptop, then reappeared shortly, and all was right with the world.  I often suspected that they just took the machine down to their offices and let it rest for awhile, but it didn’t matter.  It worked.

My current IT support doesn’t even come close.   Here are the five most common responses from my current IT person:

  1. “It never does that when I’m using it.”
  2. “Read the manual.”
  3. “Why are you wasting time reading the manual?”
  4. “Elvis in Bangalore said…”
  5. And the incredibly irritating, “What did you do to it?”

And I have to sleep with this guy just to get this cruddy level of service.

Compare that to the support I got at WebCT.  Once a full cup of tea I had carefully placed on the total opposite side of my desk miraculously leapt up of its own volition and poured its entire contents through the keyboard and into the bowels of my computer.  Just like a code blue in a hospital, guys came running from everywhere.  “You may not want to see this, ma’am,” they said, politely closing my office door.

Or the time I had to tell them I’d backed my car over my laptop.  (Okay, first I said my computer had crashed.  Then I admitted I had crashed into my computer.)  They didn’t ask why, or even how.  They just fixed it. And then they went out of their way to explain that it wasn’t the stupidest thing anyone at the company had ever done with a laptop. (My favorites were the guy who sent his laptop from China in a manila envelope.  Not even a padded envelope.  Just a note that said, “It’s broken.”  Well, it is now.  Or the contractor who checked his laptop with his luggage, because the company didn’t have a specific policy against it.  “We don’t have a policy against sending your computer to the dry-cleaner, either,” Bob Bean responded in his typical manner, “but you wouldn’t do that, would you? Or maybe you would…”)

So Bob, Jeff, Chuck, Diraj, Matt and Shahab, you are gone, but not forgotten.  Or I am gone, but you are not forgotten.  Or something.  And of course, Sarah, Kurt (x2) Max, (x2 or was it 3?)  Thank you for everything you did for me and for the company. 

By the way, could one of you come over and talk to my current guy?  He could really use a little help with his attitude.

And Now for a Brief Commercial Message…

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My short story “Winter Rental” has just been published in Seasmoke, an anthology of mystery, crime and suspense stories by New England authors.

seasmoke-cover.JPG 

The introduction to Seasmoke says, “Some stories hold us even though we’re not sure where the crime is or when it will show up.  But we are captured in the first paragraph and held until the end.  Barbara Ross’s story, ‘Winter Rental,’ is one of these.” 

“Winter Rental,” won an honorable mention for the Al Blanchard Award www.mwane.org/crimebake/Al.htm.  The award was presented at the conference dinner at Crimebake, an annual mystery writers conference sponsored by the New England Chapters of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters In Crime www.mwane.org/crimebake/Default.htm.  The whole experience including the conference, dinner, award and book signing was tremendous fun.

Ordering info for Seasmoke appears on this page http://www.levelbestbooks.com/Seasmoke.htm.

Thanks for watching this commercial message.  Have a great Thanksgiving.  Now back to regularly scheduled programming.

The Autumn of Barb

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It seems like everyone I talk to asks (with a degree of expectation I always find a little daunting), “So What Are You Doing Now?”

When my colleague Lisa Philpott branded her time off in August, “The Summer of Lisa,” I knew immediately that this would be “The Autumn of Barb.”  Lisa helpfully pointed out “The Autumn of Barb,” is much better than “The Fall of Barb,” which gives the wrong impression entirely.

So what have I been doing?

1) Cleaning closets.  My closets are very clean.  In fact, I invite you to come over to my house and open any one of your choosing.  Those of you who know us well will recognize this as quite a turnabout from the days when we had young children and two jobs and whole rooms that were not suitable for visitor viewing.

As I have talked to former colleagues, closet cleaning has emerged as quite a theme.  Our attics, basements and garages are spotless, our spices are alphabetized, our gardens are battened down for the winter and our cars are detailed.  I have to say, we are probably the cleanest group of people around.

(In a related note, I had Bill’s car detailed and now it has the most peculiar, well actually, the most awful smell.  I can only conclude that the wall-to-wall wrappers, receipts and empty Dunkin Donuts cups were somehow holding down the smell and now that they are gone it has been released.  Needless to say, this wasn’t the objective of the whole detailing project and I guess the moral of the story is that some things are left well enough alone.)

But nonetheless, I have been

1) Cleaning closets.

2) I have also been cruising the internet.  Well, not so much cruising, as checking.  It seems that about the time I left work, an edict came down dictating that weather cannot change, the stock market cannot go up or down and no major event can occur (either news or celebrity-related) unless I have personally reviewed it.  This keeps me very, very busy indeed.

So I have been

1) Cleaning closets

2) Checking the internet.

3) I have also been grocery shopping.  This is frankly an amazing turn of events, since I have always said one of the major achievements of my adult life was convincing Bill that I should not be allowed to grocery shop.

(For those of you who might want to achieve this, it is really pretty simple.  On a joint shopping trip—or as many as it takes—enter a catatonic state immediately after entering the store and start dumping things in the cart without looking at ingredients or universal price codes and just wait until your exasperated spouse orders you out.  It is important at this moment not to let your ego get in the way—after all, what kind of a moron doesn’t know how to grocery shop? Humbly accept your fate and exit quickly, in the best of circumstances, never to return.)

So given my pride about convincing Bill for years that I could not shop, it has been quite a turn to find myself back in a grocery store.  But given that he has been working full tilt and I have been, well, not, there is really no way around it.  I have been confining myself to Whole Foods because they tend to have a small footprint and the label-reading is likely to yield something that has actual food in it relatively quickly.  I had to go into a Super Duper Quadruper Stop & Shop for garbage bags the other day.  It was the size of a nuclear power plant and had everything in it but a car dealership and I think I actually did become catatonic.

So, busy, busy, busy

1) Cleaning closets

2) Checking the internet

 

3) Grocery shopping.

4) The final thing I have been doing is keeping my mother-in-law’s plants alive.  This is another major accomplishment for me.  When I had children at home and employees to nurture, plants seemed superfluous and frankly just plain needy.

But since that all seems to be behind me for the moment, I have been voluntarily taking care of my mother-in-law’s plants in her apartment downstairs and I am happy to report that every one of them is still alive with only a month to go until she returns. Of course, I did take one of them up to stay with her in Maine, but that one had distinctly diva-like tendencies I couldn’t abide.

I haven’t moved any of the plants upstairs, where it would certainly be easier to care for them, because I don’t want them staring at me reproachfully when I am doing important things– like checking the internet.  All and all, though, I am pretty proud of this plant achievement.

So, to review, I have been

1) Cleaning closets

2) Checking the internet

3) Grocery shopping

 

4) Keeping plants alive.

The main question I have is—how did I ever find time for a job?

It hasn’t all been work, work, work.  I had ten days in Boothbay and a three-day writing retreat on Star Island in the Isles of Shoals, and a weekend in NYC to check out Kate’s new apartment and Rob’s new apartment and see old friends.  And, I have some really cool stuff coming up.

All and all, “The Autumn of Barb,” has been quite lovely and something I would recommend to anyone who can find the right time in life for it.

My Commencement Address

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When you reach a certain age, you face certain realities.  For instance, you will probably never win an academy award and get to go on national television and thank all the people who should properly be thanked for all the good things that have happened in your life until the orchestra plays you off.  And you will probably never be asked to give a commencement address, because let’s face it, you are never going to win a Nobel prize or donate a building or be shot into space.

So nobody has asked.  But here is the commencement address I would give if I were.

Young men and women. 

Some of you support the war in Iraq and some of you loath it.  Some of you have friends and family over there, though it is likely in an age without conscription most of you do not.

There is something you must not do.  You must never confuse your feelings about this war with your feelings about your fellow countrymen and women who are fighting it.  If you are against this war, you must channel your rage at your elders who made it happen and not at your contemporaries who are there.  If you have gone to Iraq, you must never confuse expressions of dislike, despair or disparagement of the war for expressions of the same about yourselves, even if older voices goad you to do so.

So far, you have done well at this.  My generation failed utterly and created within itself such hard divisions that they echo down the decades still.  We created such intense walls of hatred, suspicion and guilt that you saw the same old arguments and animosities played out in the last presidential election—more than 30 years after the war ended.

We will never get over this.  We have inflicted wounds that will never heal.  So you must never start.  Blame the older generation on all sides that took you there—but never, ever blame each other.

Update

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I had brunch with my children in New York City on Sunday and they are demanding an update to the blog since they think the entry containing the advice for Sheila (see June) casts some aspersions that are no longer accurate. 

So, Rob is living in Brooklyn and working as the production manager for Leaders Magazine http://www.leadersmag.com/index.html .  Kate is living and working in Soho at Creativ & Company http://www.creativandco.com .  No one is spending much time on the couch or working nights at Kinkos (not that there is anything wrong with that).

The Seafarer Inn

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I have just returned from 10 days at the Seafarer Inn in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.  Sitting in one of the rocking chairs on the Inn’s wide front porch watching the sailboats glide across the harbor is one of my favorite things in the world.

Your hostess at the Inn is my mother-in-law, Olga.  Ignore the first name, which came from a novel her mother favored in the 1920s.  Her maiden name, DiIanni, is much more meaningful.  Like the Marchmains of Brideshead, the DiIannis of Olga’s generation are cursed with a dangerous charm, albeit in a version I like to think of as “Marchmain lite”—not quite the same taste levels, but also far less alcohol.

For almost 20 years, Olga has put the DiIanni charm to good use running The Seafarer as a Bed & Breakfast Inn.  Often have a reserved mid-western couple hoping for a quiet night in Boothbay been surprised, after the communal breakfast and ritual picture taking, to find themselves enthusiastically hugging and kissing Olga good-bye on the big front porch, promising to come again.

Some guests go even further.  Olga has a small but fanatical following who seem to like nothing better than to come, stay for several days, and do her chores for her.  These guests arrive every year to wash the lawn furniture, pull the weeds, hang pictures and do other rounds of endless activity and then pay her for the privilege.

We, her children, have wondered about this for some time.  Appropriate to its architecture, The Seafarer is decorated in the Victorian manner, which is to say that every available surface, either horizontal or vertical, is covered with—something.  We gave up moving any of this stuff around long ago (except occasionally to clear off a chair so we can sit down), because we found that liberating any space at all only created an invitation to fill it up again.  Therefore, we have often been mystified by the sudden appearance something like of a heavy bureau in a third floor bedroom. 

“Picked it up at the dump,” my mother-in-law will proudly explain.  “Solid mahogany.  Can you imagine someone getting rid something like this?”

“Perhaps it was someone who already had three or four bureaus per bedroom,” my husband will suggest, gazing around meaningfully.

“How does she even get this stuff in here?” he would hiss soon as she was out of earshot, imagining house elves or magic mice.

“I think,” I answered, “It’s the damn guests.”

My suspicions were initially aroused when I answered the phone at the Inn one day.  “Hi,” proclaimed the chipper voice at the other end.  “It’s Steve. I was just calling to make my reservation.”

“When did you want to come, Steve?” I asked.

“Second week in October, the same as always.”  Steve seemed a little offended that I wasn’t aware of this.  “I come every year to see the foliage and put up the storm windows.”

This year, I finally got the chance to catch the action first hand.  While I was staying at the Inn, Al, Marsha and Miles O’Brien arrived from Peabody, Mass., for a two night stay.  Olga actually closed the Inn two summers ago, but that has not stopped the most fanatical of the chore-doers from coming, even though now the place is now 100% amenity-less.  For these people, making your own bed and breakfast at the Bed & Breakfast only adds to the appeal.  I have to say that on the surface the O’Briens seemed like perfectly normal—even nice–people, though Miles was perhaps a bit more polite than the average adolescent dragged off to a Bed & Breakfast with no TV or internet by his well-meaning but clueless parents.

The minute they arrived, Al huddled with Olga about the to-do list.  They inspected the property.  He had ideas.  Of course, so did she.

“Time for bed,” Al announced to his family immediately following dinner on the first night with all the anticipation normally reserved for a fishing trip or a cruise to Monhegan.  “The hardware store opens at 6:00 a.m.!” 

I came down the next morning to find Olga in the kitchen.  “Where are Al and Marsha?” I asked.

“Marsha ran to the supermarket and Al is trimming the bushes,” she answered showing absolutely no awareness that these are not vacation activities–are, in fact, the very activities that most people go to a Bed & Breakfast to get away from.

As I sat on the porch, sipping coffee and gazing at the boats in the harbor and occasionally at Al doing his Edward Scissorhands impression in the hedge, I thought I had the answer.  “Ah,” I thought, “Al is one of those men who don’t know how to relax, who think puttering equals recreation.”

But Marsha put that notion to rest as soon as she returned.  “I can’t get him to do a thing at home,” she said, gazing fondly at her husband who was sweating profusely while tangoing with a winsome rhododendron.  “I have a to-do list and I have begged him and begged him to do just one thing on it.”

“Don’t you have to make your own bed in rehab?” my daughter Kate asked a little later.  She was sitting in the rocker next to mine, painting her toenails and staring at Al, who appeared to be covered in small cuts, and, along with his hedge-clippers, was now so entangled in a lilac bush he looked like he was battling a giant squid.  Kate’s furrowed brow told me she, too, was trying to understand the O’Briens.

“Yeah,” I answered, “but I think that only does something for people who are so addled they can’t make their beds at home.”

That night, Marsha reminisced at dinner.  “The first time we came here was the week you opened.  We were on our honeymoon.  I helped you hang the curtains in the living room.”

“Is that so?” Olga replied politely.

Frankly, Marsha seemed a little hurt that Olga couldn’t remember this, but really, so many guest, so many chores…

Later, we looked at through the photo albums (assembled by guest Jeanine Weinstein, 1994-2002) trying to find pictures of the O’Briens on that fateful visit.  We came up empty, though we did find snaps of the year they stained the deck.

I never did unlock the mystery of why people come to work and pay money to Olga for the privilege.  Maybe it is that deadly DiIanni charm.  Or maybe their parents live far away, or are gone, and these guests want to remember what it is like to spend a weekend doing annoying tasks with poor tools and an irritating level of supervision.  Or maybe they want not so much rehab as “hab,” that feeling of satisfaction that comes from helping someone who needs the skills you have and the time you can give, and who provides friendship and connection in return.

Whatever it is, it doesn’t speak to me.  I sat on the porch and finished reading my book.

Saying Good-bye to WebCT

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Dear Colleagues–

The time has come to say good-bye.  I can honestly say I didn’t anticipate how difficult it would be, even though, in its way, it’s been coming for a long time.

A huge part of what I am has been determined by what I have learned from all of you—about customers, about sales, about service, about support, about technology, about finance, about how to take the fuzziest of notions and turn it into a product and explain it to a market, about how to run a company, and most of all, about how to be in the world. More than anything else, I want to thank you for that.

Many of you have been kind enough to drop me notes about what working at WebCT has meant to you.

Some of you have talked about the company.  Kathy Vieira taught me that the heart and soul of any services organization, the magic confidence that enables consultants to go out and do their jobs, comes from knowing that someone has always got your back.  That’s the way I felt at WebCT.  I knew I lived in a strong and supportive network of people I could count on, who put the customers’ interests before their own, pulled together as a team, and always, always watched each other’s backs.

Others of you have talked about the opportunity we have had to change the world.  It’s hard to travel back 10 years and imagine a time when the most exciting content accessible on a university’s network was the menu for the dining hall–or back to a time when many people told Carol and I this notion would never stick or grow because college professors would never, ever touch technology. 

I find it overwhelming to think about the change we’ve seen in global terms.  I find it easier to think in terms of a story Lisa Philpott and Sarah Burke included in the IMPACT 2005 keynote about a middle-aged man who displayed such talent and compassion at the hospice while caring for his dying wife that the workers there urged him to change careers and become a healthcare practitioner.  He made the change while working and caring for his daughter, and never set foot on campus until the day he graduated as valedictorian of his class.  When Sarah interviewed him, he said that what made him proudest was that working at home in the evening on his computer, he was able to model for his daughter the skills, eagerness to learn and work ethic he believed she would need in her own life.  When he returned from graduation, she had created a Powerpoint presentation to offer her congratulations.

That is the sea change we have been a part of.  All of us.  And I hope each of you takes pride in your own contribution.

I want to wish every one of you the very best wherever life takes you from here. Please do not hesitate to reach out if I can ever be of any help.

For Jen and Mladen–The Secret to a Happy Marriage

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Recently I have been thinking a lot about what makes a happy marriage.  From the perspective of 30 years (27.6 of them happy, cumulatively), I think I can say that I have isolated the ONE thing that will ensure your future happiness:

–plain, old, blind, dumb luck.

That’s right.  Luck is the one thing that separates the good from the bad, the sublime from the truly awful.

I know it’s an unsatisfying answer for a couple of goal-oriented, high-achievers like yourselves—not to mention bad news for Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura, Dr. Ruth and all those people who grind out millions of pages of advice in “women’s” magazines.

But it is the truth.  It’s amazing how much of it comes down to stumbling on the right person and being, for whatever reason, at a point in both your lives when you are smart enough to recognize it.

So while there isn’t much you can do now, having found the right person and all, to ensure your happiness, there are a few things you can do to protect against unhappiness. So here is the only secret I have figured out.

Fighting is no big deal: I am always skeptical of those couples who never fight.  After all, this is a huge step you are taking.  You are promising that you will never again, ever, make a major decision without taking into account the needs and desires of another person.  And there are some huge decisions not far down the road for you—whether, when and how to have kids, where to live, where to work, how much to work, how much to spend, how much to save. And that’s just for starters.  You will need to revisit some of these decisions again and again as time, fate and luck (remember luck?) play into the equation. 

With practice, most couples find ways to navigate the big decisions, but that leaves the small stuff.  Things like—

–What-is-this-(alleged-collectible, hideous-piece-of-furniture, free-loading-relative)-and-why-is-it-taking-up-room-in-our-house? Or

–What-do-you-mean-you-took-the (trash, dog, free-loading relative)-out-the-last-time? And the ever popular

–Would-it-kill-you-to-(replace-the-toilet-paper, run-the-disposal, wait-on-the-freeloading-relative)-just-once?

Or whatever the little frictions in your particular relationship may be. 

Anyway, fighting or arguing or bickering is just the way that, having pledged to go down the same road for the rest of your lives, you negotiate the direction, speed, vehicle, and all the many things that remain negotiable.  So don’t worry about it, unless you run into

The Three Horseman: The three horseman of the marriage apocalypse are money, sex and the kids.  If a couple is fighting about one, they are normal.  If they are simultaneously fighting about two, danger signals are flashing.  And if they are fighting about all three, it is just a matter of time before you are sending their Christmas card to two different addresses.

The thing about the three horsemen is they are bedrock values issues.  When a couple is at odds over all three for an extended period of time, they almost always expose a true fissure in the relationship—a couple whose core values are growing apart.

So it’s important to know what you are really fighting about.  Money, sex and the kids are all short hand for what you value. You demonstrate what you value by how you allocate your resources, time and attention.  What you attend to says more about you than anything else.

Which brings us to

R-E-S-P-E-C-T:  Marriages can survive deep financial setbacks, horrifying personal losses and infidelity.  But they can never, ever survive the loss of respect.  When one spouse loses respect for the other, even if love remains, it becomes just a matter of time until the marriage, one way or another, is over.

So the good news is, each of you holds half the key to the success of your marriage in your hand.  Whenever you are at a crossroads, make the choice that allows you to maintain respect for yourself.  And if you make the wrong choice, grab hold of it, fix it, stop it, turn it around.

The bad news is, each of you holds only half the key.  You cannot control the other person.  You will find there are times when a word, gesture, action or even silence helps the other person make the right choice. You will also find there are times when nothing you do or say can make a difference. If you picked the right person (and you did) then they have it in them to make the right choices.

And that is the secret.

Which pretty much brings us back to the luck part.

Jen and Mladen–I have no doubts about you.  You are strong people who have each faced adversity in your own lives and come through with strong and common values.  And you have been lucky enough and smart enough to find each other at just the right time.

I hope the universe brings you nothing but happiness.

Why I Love Living in Massachusetts

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     Today when I was at the Post Office in Davis Square, Somerville, a tweedy old guy wandered up to the window and asked the middle-aged postal clerk if he had any stamps with movie stars on them.

“Well,” replied the clerk, “I have Ronald Reagan.”

And then he looked at the old guy and the old guy looked at him and they both burst out laughing.  

The clerk knew the old guy wasn’t going to buy the Ronald Reagan stamps.  In fact, the clerk’s expression implied it had been a long time since anyone had bought those stamps.

The old guy went with superheroes stamps.  No explanation or further conversation was necessary.  

And that’s why I love living in Massachusetts.

For Sheila–some advice as she embarks on her greatest adventure

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Dear Sheila—

As motherhood nears, I wanted to take some time to share some of my hard won experience with you.  In doing this, I am fully aware that my desire to give advice is far greater than your desire to receive it.  In fact, one thing I can reliably predict is that in the next 25 years (I can’t speak beyond that) you will be getting a constant stream of advice, good and bad, solicited and unsolicited, from friends, family and total strangers you meet in the supermarket.  It is easy to have contempt for these people, but remember, it is an uncontrollable urge, and soon you will be one of them.

Predictions 

There are some other things I can reliably predict.  For example, I know that in the next 24 months, at least seven out of the following ten things will happen to you.

1. As you grow closer to your due date, women will tell you horrible labor and delivery stories.  No one knows why women inflict these stories on other women who are about to give birth, but they inevitably do.  Since men have been allowed into delivery rooms, sometimes they tell awful labor stories, too.  This is even more disconcerting than when women do it.

2. Once you have given birth, you will attempt to tell your own labor and delivery story.  No matter what happens to you, your story will be topped by someone else in the room, probably a relative of your husband’s.  If you are in labor for a week, then have a caesarean followed by the unexpected delivery of twins, there will be a woman in the room who was in hard labor for a month, followed by an emergency caesarian, followed by an allergic reaction to anesthesia, followed by the unexpected arrival of quadruplets.  This is a game you cannot win.  Bow out gracefully.

3.  From the day you give birth, no one will take your picture again unless you are holding, standing next to or in some other proximate position to your child.  This will be true until you have grandchildren.  Then you will have to stand next to one of them to get your picture taken.

4. After the baby is born, Brian will come home from work one day and find you in your bathrobe.  You will explain that when you got up that morning, your two top goals for the day were to take a shower and get dressed, but for reasons you are no longer able to enumerate, you were unable to achieve either one.

5.  One day, Brian will walk through the door with a big smile on his face and inquire, “How’s my baby?”  It will take you a few moments to realize he does not mean you.  These will not be good moments.

6.  On a hot summer day, your baby will explode.  That is, more poop will come out of your baby than seems possible given his size.  If you are lucky, this explosion will take place on a changing table.  If you are unlucky, it will take place in a car seat or on your Great Aunt Ida’s lap.  At a family wedding.

7. Someday, you will be at an important business meeting in a business suit and you will feel an uncomfortable dampness.  It will take you a few moments to realize that milk is leaking from your breasts.  Don’t worry.  No one else can see it.  Women’s business suits were invented for just these occasions.  There is no other plausible explanation for women’s business suits.

8. Some person, probably of your parents’ generation, will utter the phrase, “You mean he doesn’t do X yet?”  Where X will mean, roll over, sit up, eat solid food, sleep through the night, or speak Japanese.

9. Another person, also probably of your parents generation will say, “You mean he still does Y?” where Y will mean, uses a pacifier, wears diapers, comes into your bed at night or lives at home.

10.  In the next two months, you will make up a song that goes, “Go to sleep, little baby, please, please, please, please, please, please.  Daddy’s cranky.  Mommy’s brain-damaged from the la-ack of REM sleep.  Go to sleep, go to sleep, before Mommy starts screaming.  Because Mommy’s afraid, if she starts she will never stop.”  Eighteen years later, when you are lying in bed waiting for your son to return from his senior prom, you will remember this song with perfect clarity.

But What of the Advice? 

So enough of predictions—what about the advice?  Well, at the moment, Rob has an EBB (Everything But Bachelors) from UCLA and is working nights at Kinkos. (Lord help us, not even days at Kinkos.)  And Kate is lying on the couch waiting for Vogue to call.  Not that she has contacted Vogue in any way.  She is just waiting for them to call. 

So I am not feeling like I am in any position to give advice.

One Last Prediction..

However, I will make one last prediction—and that is this.  It will all be worth it.  Every bit of it. 

Before I had children, friends used to say, “We’re (exhausted, broke, hungry, living without privacy, living without sex, living with a tiny dictator who is running both our lives), but it is worth it.  And I would look into their deeply circled eyes and think, My God, some people can rationalize anything. 

Here is the amazing part–Once I had my own children, I realized they were right.

Having small children is an incredible amalgam of love and infatuation.  It’s the infatuation that catches you by surprise.  It’s like falling in love, but with everything speeded up like a movie in fast forward.  It’s got all the elements of your first crush–the desire to see the person all the time, the need to constantly touch that is so strong that you will actually contemplate waking up a sleeping baby, even though you know it is crazy.  And until your son goes off to pre-school and begins to make his own friends separate from his life with you—here is the thing: You will know every single thing about him.  You will never know anyone else as well.  And until that part of his brain that makes him a sentient, logical human being begins to kick in and rule his life—he will know everything about you. He will know when you are there, but not really there—and he will call you on it.  He will know when you need a laugh and when you need to cry and when you just need to be patted gently on the back.  In your lifetime, you will achieve no greater intimacy.  That is the infatuation part and that gets you through the hardest physical part of parenting and it is its own reward.

The like all great relationships, as the infatuation matures, it becomes a bedrock of love.  You will love your son and it will be for life. It will help you understand how your parents love you.  The love part gets you through all the rest.  As parenting becomes less physically demanding, and more and more psychologically complex, it is the love part that gets you through and it is its own reward. 

Not that there aren’t a lot of hard days and nights ahead of you.  Nights especially.  Night feedings.  Night visitors in your bed.  Nights of dealing with crazed adolescents who are “sleeping” over.  Nights waiting for the sound of a car turning into the drive.

And funnily enough, through all of that, you will never question whether it is worth it.  Because you will know that it is. 

So Sheila, best of luck to you, and to Brian and you embark on this wonderful, awful, crazy adventure, because luck is a big part of it.  I know you will be phenomenal parents.