My wife and I don’t have kids yet, I just came across this blog because I have been stocking up on all the “fathering manuals” and watching “Jon and Kate Plus 8″ etc. trying to prepare myself for the eventuality of having a child of my own. I thought this blog might be good reading to see what kind of challenges I will face as a father and boy is it! Anyway, enough explaining why I’m here–I read your entry and I want you to know that I almost cried for you–I WAS THAT BOY! We’re from Chicago, and I remember my Mom dropping me off for our Close-Up (is it still called that?) trip back when I was in 8th grade. It was agonizing to have her show me affection; I was not particularly good at sports, I won the spelling bee (read: DORK!) and I was not tall or good looking by a long shot. What I’m trying to impress upon you is that the ONLY thing that I had in my own power was the ability to act “cool”. That was (at that time) the only thing that would get me a girlfriend, popular, invited to sleepovers, whatever…I never thought of the woman at the other end of that cold shoulder. It’s been years, and I’ve apologized profusely for being a brat, and I am impressed at how *tough* my mother was, but I want you to know that we *don’t* grow up that fast…inside of me all through that trip was a boy who wanted his mom to share with him the incredible colors of Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol at the Smithsonian Museum of Modern Art, but could only make fun of it because he was with the “cool kids”, and the boy that wanted to visit the mysterious Masonic landmarks of DC, but had to settle for “Hey…your name rhymes with Mason”, and the boy who, with the money his mom gave him, bought all kinds of “junk”–pewter thimbles, postcards, mini Washington monuments–to give her when he got back home.

We love and miss our moms in our own way…Thanks for your post!