My mom had an approach to parenting, a philosophy. She saw raising kids as a happy endeavor, more adventure than science, and she aimed to show me and my two siblings that the world was an amiable place — that you could wander around in it and see interesting things, and then come home and sleep in your own bed, unscathed.
.. In 1994, when I became a parent myself, she offered me an observation instead of advice: “You expect your children to become clones of yourself,” she wrote in a letter, summing up her own parental journey, “but they don’t, and for that you are secretly glad.”
.. So eventually, in my mom’s final year, I began camping, clandestinely, on the grounds of her retirement home. There was a patch of forest, a grove of pines and maples and oaks, down a wheelchair-friendly path away from the parking lot
.. My mom was a lifelong hiker and cross-country skier. Her advice to anyone suffering angst was simple: “Just go outside and get some fresh air!”
.. My mom, and my mom alone, had read every word that I’d ever published. She had borne witness to my tricks for over 50 years, and she had amassed an infinitude of details on who I was and how I might behave in every scenario.