Saturday, May 22, 2010

Mothers hold their children's hands for a short while, but their hearts forever.

The weekend after Mother's Day my sister Pati was in town, and I spent some time with her taking her Intensati classes that she was conducting locally. We watched the movie "Babies" together just before she went back to New York City.

Pati's story is really amazing and inspiring. After graduating from high school here in San Jose she just decided to go to New York and carve out a career for herself. Now she has a book out along with numerous videos and has appeared on the Today Show. You can read all about her at  http://www.satilife.com.

But Pati's grandest undertaking is still in the works. She is six months pregnant with Olivia.

My mother gave birth to 11 children. She wasn't your typical "June Cleaver" kind of mother.  She was always on the go, always had something going on. Things were happening when my mother was around.

And there are good and bad aspects to having that kind of mother. Sometimes, the "June Cleaver" model seemed pretty appealing. Wouldn't it have been nice to have had someone who was always there for you?

But I am convinced that "June Cleaver" could not have produced someone like my sister Pati. Pati has a lot of my dad's inner calmness, so she is not a carbon copy of my mother by any means. But she is a doer, as was my mother. And she is beautiful, like my mother. Both my parents were very proud of her.

One of the great points from the movie "Babies" is that it clearly shows that there is more than one way to raise a child. Pati and I watched it together, myself with nostalgia for my babies grown up, Pati with anticipation for Olivia.

That is one thing about babies. You always have anticipation for them to move to the next level, to smile, to rollover, to crawl and then stand. That is another great feature of the movie "Babies". It showed you that babies are perfect, right where they are.