Skip to main content

Joy

Pure, unadulterated, flat out enjoyment...spraying fountain on a hot day on the boardwalk.

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

Ever notice how unadulterated's root word is "adult?" Ever wonder about that? What do you say to children when they say how they can't wait to grow up? Do anything they want? Do you tell them the price of that freedom?

Someone once said that motherhood is like this super secret club and nobody tells you the membership rules until after you join. I think adulthood is like that. Would you have been so anxious to get here, if you had known?

Yes and no.

I tell my daughter, when she says she can't wait to grow up, that adulthood is a lot like childhood. Sometimes we get to choose and sometimes we don't, sometimes we can and sometimes we can't, sometimes we are free and other times someone is looking over our shoulder.

Don't be in a hurry to grow up, I tell her. Enjoy childhood. You'll never get to do it again. I'll never get to see her do it again. It goes much too quickly.

That's why I am so glad to have this moment caught, forever and ever as my daughter would say.

By Julie Pippert
Museum Quality Digital Art and Photography
Limited Edition Prints
www.ArtfulbyNature.com
The Golden Orchid

© 2005. All images and text exclusive property of Julie Pippert. Not to be used or reproduced.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Restaurant Trauma in Texas: How eating out prompted a really uncomfortable lesson about culture

WARNING: This is NOT a family-friendly post, aka the warning I WISH I'd gotten yesterday before I walked in. Yesterday was a Holiday. I hope you heard the scare quotes around that. Yeah, when you are an adult here is how holidays work: you, same workload as always, kids WOO HOO NO SCHOOL FREEDOM. Do the equation. The result is the day I had yesterday. If math isn't your strong suit I'm pretty sure you can still add that up but just in case let's say the highlight of the afternoon included me dumping out the mismatched sock basket and telling the children to have at it, in a way very reminiscent of Miss Hannigan of Annie . Anyway luckily I've taught my kids that Chores are Fun! and they had a good time. Later, I cranked up the fun-o-meter on a bank errand by dropping in the Halloween store to check out costumes, and upped the ante on "Mom needs new running shoes" by tacking on a "Hey let's eat out at a restaurant!" My husband was able to join ...

First it was cocktails and now it's marijuana?

Oh wouldn't Meredith Vieira love to get her graspy judgmental paws on this one: " I'm a Better Mother When Stoned ," by LJ Wilson (pseudonym) currently up at Babble (along with caveat that Babble doesn't endorse alcohol or illegal drug use while parenting). The only problem is I'm afraid I might end up nodding along with her as she rasps out a smug and self-righteous snarky comment that slams all parents who toke a dubie while parenting. Wilson writes I've been a weekend pot smoker since I was about eighteen. As a new mother, I continued the indulgence, but only when I was out and my son had a babysitter. I swore I'd never be stoned around my kid. And that plan worked for two and a half years, right up until one morning when my toddler waged a concerted campaign to fray each of my nerves. Wow. My first moment of disbelief was that it took two and a half years for her child to fray her nerves . That's some laid back well-behaved kid! Or some laid ...

It's cancer

Adenocarcinoma. This is a common form of colorectal cancer. From About.com Definition of Adenocarcinoma Let's break it down. "Adeno-" is a prefix that means "gland." In general, glands secrete things and are classified as endocrine or exocrine. Endocrine glands secrete things into the bloodstream, like hormones. Exocrine glands secrete things that go outside of the body, like mucus and sweat. A carcinoma is a malignant tumor that starts in epithelial tissue. Put the two words together and you get "adenocarcinoma," which means a malignant tumor in epithelial tissue, specifically in a gland. Cause of Adenocarcinoma Virtually all adenocarcinomas develop from adenomas. In general, the bigger the adenoma, the more likely it is to become cancerous. For example, polyps larger than two centimeters (about the diameter of a nickel) have a 30-50 percent chance of being cancerous. You can learn more about polyp size and colon cancer risk by viewing the Polyp Size...