Parents, whether or not we believe in a deity, know that to witness a child's mind searching for meaning is a miracle.

No matter how children came to be living with just one parent, they need to be told, again and again, that your family's configuration is the result of an adult decision or an act of fate that has nothing whatsoever to do with them.

[Our family is] a wonderfully messy arrangement, in which relationships overlap, underlie, support, and oppose one another. It didn't always come together easily nor does it always stay together easily. It's known very good times and very bad ones. It has held together, often out of shared memories and hopes, sometimes out of the lure of my sisters' cooking, and sometimes out of sheer stubbornness. And like the world itself, our family is renewed by each baby.

Parents, whether or not we believe in a deity, know that to witness a child's mind searching for meaning is a miracle.

One of the silliest lines ever said in a feature film came from Love Story, the 1970s hit, which immortalized the phrase, "Love means never having to say you're sorry." There are few people who would actually want to share a life with someone who held that concept near and dear.

Our kids are not here to comfort us, to entertain us, or to validate us. Those things need to come from ourselves and from other adults.

We've all got to remember to pick our battles carefully, to be prepared to lose small ones, and to hold out for big ones.