Mamacita says: My children, of whom I often speak on this blog, aren’t really children any more. I know this perfectly well, but sometimes when I write of them – the cute things they’ve done, etc. – I tend to step into a time machine and go back and forth at nobody’s discretion, not even mine. The timeline in my head goes back and forth, without warning and often with interesting consequences. The explanation for this is simple, two-part though it is: Firstly, I am a mom. Secondly: I probably ain’t right in the head.

My children are adults. They don’t live here any more. I don’t support them. I don’t feed them (on a regular basis) or clothe them (Santa Claus still does) pay their bills, clean their homes, supervise their social lives, or demand to meet the parents of their friends.

My children have friends I have never met. Imagine. This still blows me away.  I suspect at times that my children have. . . sob. . . DATED. . . . people whose families I know nothing about.  It’s impossible but true.

My children have been known to be photographed in bars pubs, with alcoholic beverages Cokes held high in the air as in some kind of toast or declaration of good times.

This is ridiculous, as I know for a fact that my children are just down the hall, putting on footie jams with Transformers and Strawberry Shortcake on them, in preparation for our nightly reading of another chapter of The Secret Garden, complete with dialect.

There’s naught as nice as th’ smell o’ good clean earth, except th’ smell o’ fresh growin’ things when th’ rain falls on ’em.

Remove the dialect and the cool fancy words, and all you’ve got is a Little Golden Book.  Also?  Mommy’s dialect makes small children giggle.  There’s no amount of money in the world that could pay for that.

You’re not reading Frances Hodgson Burnett to your children, a chapter at a time, every night?  What’s wrong with you?  Kids grow up wrong when they’re not read to every night!

Not backing down.

So when I tell you here that my children still hang stockings at Christmas, and get a filled basket at Easter, and love to wear tiny little OshKosh overalls, and have an entire solar system of fairies under the desk in the living room, and make signs informing birds that we have lots of worms in our yard and they should all land here, and are so happy because they’re having blueberry muffins and boiled eggs for breakfast that they can barely eat for the rejoicing, all those things were true.

The Easter baskets and Christmas stockings are still true.  Only bad mommies stop filling Easter Baskets and Christmas stockings.  Good mommies never stop.  And that’s the truth.

It’s all still true.  It was true once and will always be true.

You just have to figure out where I’m standing on that timeline in my head.  Good luck with that.  I get confused, myself.