The hopes and plans we have for our children seem to be our own undoing time and again as we raise them.

Cruel jokes of fate snatch our dreams of ballet or baseball, super student awards or sports heroes.

Fateful changes in life deprive us of 2 parent families, Hallmark Christmas's, and earth mother years raising broods of merry giggling bands.

Our children's own character, that we have so hoped and nurtured, turns out to be the very thing that gives them the will or the strength or the stubborn nature to make choices we abhor, pick friends we disdain, refuse help when they need it, tutoring when they are failing, and support when they are devastated.

Each time, us moms that care, that love, and that support those fragile, forceful, wild children, have to reinvent our fantasies, re-evaluate our goals, re-negotiate our dreams and never show the mourning for what we might feel we have lost in our hearts even as we embrace and fall in love with the new future all over again.