Dear Grandma,

 I thought of you when I dropped Dash at school this morning. In the moment I turned to go, his expression was one of consternation and I wished in that second that he felt happier.

 I wondered what you would have felt when you saw his expression, which has prompted me to invoke you, to ask you to join me on the playground, to come observe this new world of parents and their children and what you might have to say drawing from your own experience.

You could answer without the fear of my blame and with distance and objectivity (you’ve been dead for more than 30 years) and perhaps without guilt.

What would you say to me about worrying for Dash in that moment, about my understanding that it’s not important for him to be happy all the time and that asking that of someone is a burden, and yet, how hard it is to not try to fix those unhappy moments? Did you feel that?

Would you be mystified with my fretting, with the overattention my friends and I pay to school and activities and how it’s all surrounded by a miasma of guilt for not doing enough?

What would you say when we don’t punish him but rather ask him why he’s so angry, when we don’t force him to share, or to say he’s sorry? If you said that it is the role of children to obey and do as adults wish them to do, would you understand the powerlessness and lack of dignity they endure? Would you point out that my friends and I have lost ourselves too much in shaping their lives, that we have made ourselves (and our children) anxious in wanting too much?

I’m sure you would recognize that a vast population of parents has taken an about-face from the way we were brought up. You would note that some of us have gone too far and the rest of us are trying to figure out the right balance. I’m sure your (drawn-on*) eyebrows would rise when Dash resisted going on errands with us since they’re boring and “they’re not about me.”

So, tell me, Grandma, if you had motherhood to do all over again…