All the more amazing is how totally unprepared I was. The very first rational thought that came into my head, after all the cooing and ahhing over my precious new baby boy was, "What do I do now?" I'd spent nine months preparing for pregnancy, not parenthood. My mother was a thousand miles away, and none of my friends were married, let alone had kids.

When I was a girl my friends made money babysitting...that didn't sound like fun to me. I'd rather mow the lawn or pull dandelions for a penny a piece than babysit. The best thing about sitting was that once the little tikes (or terrors, considering some of the kids I sat) went to bed, I could raid the pantry for cookies and watch whatever I wanted on the TV. Back then, nobody was thinking what a wonderful mother I would be one day!

Fast forward to my son's birth...to begin with, for some odd reason, I'd always imagined I'd be the mother of girls. Yes, I'd taken ballet and worn a new 'bonnet' every Easter. But after I thought about it a while I realized that my best friend, Gayle, and I had spent much more time torturing Barbie and racing her pink dream convertible around my basement than we'd every spent dressing her up in that swanky pink satin number with the rabbit fur stole.

I grew up climbing willow trees, playing in the river and racing around the neighborhood playing some version of cowboys and Indians/KGB vs. CIA/or Cops and Robbers. When I look back, ballet and piano lessons seem more like interludes than definitions of my childhood. Clearly, I should have seen little boys in my future! God in his wisdom...

So what did I do when the nurse handed me my baby boy? I read everything. I became an expert on parenting. I knew it all, or thought I did. Looking back, my mom was probably very patient with me, considering how stubborn I must have occasionally been with regard to the 'rules' of parenting. God bless my oldest son, he was, like every first born, my parenting guinea pig. And like so many other first borns, he survived, thrived--despite my and Dr. Spock's best efforts-- and became a young man I'm very proud of.

I've been a parent long enough to have learned that parenting rules are made to be broken and the only time you are most likely guaranteed failures is when you refuse to toss out the rule book. Do I know it all? Not at all. But realizing that you don't is a great education.

So here I am, a couple weeks away from having been a parent fifty-ONE percent of my life. Funny, that first half seems more like something I read in a book, and an unfinished one at that. It interests and affects me, but the best part if missing. The best part started half my lifetime ago.