Decisions

So you're there with your hand on the button--if you push the button someone you don't know will die. Someone distant, a total stranger, someone you will never meet, will die. This was the premise of a short story I read years ago, and the idea that in an instant you can make a decision that can ultimately impact a life was incredible, and an incredible burden to carry if the choice you made was the wrong one.
Now, as I did twice before with my other two kids, I stand with my hand on the crib in the middle of the night making a decision. Pick her up, or let her cry? Is she hungry? Should I try to feed her? What's the right thing to do? I want to make her comfortable, I want to protect her and will wear myself out in the process of establishing for her the safety net, the security blanket of love and understanding and unconditional acceptance of the little person she is.
My middle child, a teenager whom I know is experimenting with...something at some point, wants to go to a house that her older sister has intimated has little adult supervision and the opportunity to do whatever the kids want to do. Do I trust her? When she comes home I'll ask for a kiss hello because I love her, and because I'll notice the slight whiff of cigarette smoke if she's been smoking. If I do smell smoke, do I trust her if she tells me that she's not doing anything??
My oldest before her, and all the things she experimented with --I trusted her. I trusted that eventually her own guilt would get to her and that's she'd come to her senses. I embraced her friends hoping that if they liked me enough they wouldn't hurt my little girl.
Not true.
Eventually my oldest moved away from this pack of wolves, but mostly because, thank God, they abandoned her.
My middle child makes friends, and I meet them, and I do like them. Good kids from good families, they try hard but feel compelled to do stupid things anyway. Burn holes in rugs, burn paper in the backyard, try pot.
And I have to make decisions about how to deal with it all without alienating my children, without making the wrong choice.
The stress is incredible. The decision-making is momentary, and can affect their lives for a lifetime.
I stand at the ends of their beds, or on the stairs, or years ago with my hand on their crib, choosing the direction their lives will take, trying to influence the decisions they will make as they move through their peer groups, hoping that whatever the foundation is that I gave them gives them the tools to survive through their teen years.
My baby daughter reminds me every day of the tremendous burden it is to be someone's momma. The tremendous responsibility I've embraced for the last 19 years, trying to do the right thing, struggling with the need to make decisions quickly. To make them correctly, to make them so that my children, at least at the beginning, are insulated against pain, and hurt and to insulate them so they won't be vulnerable to the horrors of the world.

Nothing prepares you for motherhood--nothing--but it is the greatest job you will ever love.