When I was a teenager I saw the movie Stella. It is a movie in which Bette Midler plays a single mother who, having raised her daughter to her early teens, realizes that the girl would be better off with the opportunities that her father could provide. In a gut wrenching scene she basically tells her daughter that she doesn't want her around so that she will stay with her father, because that is what she knows in her heart is best for her.
I didn't understand that movie at all when I saw it. I cried, but I didn't UNDERSTAND it. Not like I do now. There is truly nothing like being a parent. I'm not one of those people who thinks that everyone should have a child or that a person's life is incomplete without the experience. But it is a brain-altering thing, being a parent. And sometimes I am felled by the awe of it. The knowledge that, without hesitation, I would do ANYTHING for my son. I would lie, cheat, steal, kill, and/or die for him without question. The knowledge that although my happiness matters, it is directly tied to his. I couldn't choose my own happiness over his if the choice were given.
