In this dream,

I have lost you.  Somehow, in the midst of taking care of the older two in the park by the river, you've gone missing. It is winter - bright white and snowy and the water in the river courses around small islands of ice. And I return home, empty-armed.  Then suddenly, it is spring and I'm enjoying the sunshine with the older two - but there at the bank of the river, there you are, face-down in the water and lost forever.

This was my second terrible nightmare in as many weeks. The first is too terrible to recount.  Both were woven with my fears and inadequacies as a parent - and are nightmares which I feel I could not survive. I don't know what to do with them - I can't get them out of my head - these images that are now tacked on to the vague fears I have as a parent.  Over these past three years of wanting - then seeking - then getting our third child, I've been wracked with guilt and fear and an underlying feeling that we weren't getting pregnant with a healthy third child because I was not a worthy mother. And even more so, because I didn't deserve another child.

In fact, I was fairly certain at one point that I didn't deserve the two children I had, let alone another.  Everything I did was wrong somehow - snapping at the kids, not playing long or hard enough, not eating enough good, organic foods or doing enough hands-on projects with each other.  I wasn't hacking it as a mom and it was clear that the Universe was telling me as much.

In these past few years, though, I've come to the place as a mother where I realize that the act of parenting carries with it a series of feelings of inadequacy - whether that is true or not.  In fact, I wonder if, among the best parents, there's a high population of those who feel like they didn't do enough, didn't deserve the amazing miracles that are their children, and, perhaps, could have done better. I don't know, I really don't. I do know that even now - to his well-adjusted thirty-something daughter, my father will occasionally apologize for ills and injustices that, to be honest, I've not ever spent much time resenting.

So I've come to the point now where, nightmares be damned, I feel like I am a great mom.  Or maybe just a good mom.  Or maybe just okay.

But I'll tell you what -- my kids are fantastic.

They are witty and smart and rambunctious.  They have no fear - or few fears.  They are creative and energetic.  They are fairly well-behaved in public.  They have deep friendships and they want to be with me. If I've gotten all of that out of less-than-spectacular parenting -- just think of what's ahead of us.