We're never ready for the things that happen. When the big stuff happens, we're always looking in the other direction.

We're never ready for the things that happen. When the big stuff happens, we're always looking in the other direction.

This tug-of-war often obscures what's also happening between us. I am your mother, the first mile of your road. Me and all my obvious and hidden limitations. That means that in addition to possibly wrecking you, I have the chance to give to you what was given to me: a decent childhood, more good memories than bad, some values, a sense of tribe, a run at happiness. You can't imagine how seriously I take that - even as I fail you. Mothering you is the first thing of consequence that I have ever done.

How seriously can I take myself? I'm just one of six billion people, right?

I am an average mother in almost every way, so yes, much to my regret, I do yell at my children.

My readers often say to me, 'If we lived next door to each other, we'd be best friends.' That is precisely what I wanted to say to smart, funny, self-effacing Ellen McCarthy after I finished reading The Real Thing. I loved every lesson laid out in a book that wouldn't dare to call itself a field guide to marriage but amounts to as much on every page. This is a deeply useful little book.

And it occurs to me that maybe the reason my mother was so exhausted all the time wasn’t because she was doing so much but because she was feeling so much.