There are some people for whom parenting is pure joy. The smiles and the screams; the Valentine hand print painting brought home from school as much as the sticky fingerprints on the wall.

OK, maybe there’s one person for whom it’s pure joy.

The rest of us probably never experienced such a roller coaster–from bliss to boredom to total, gut-wrenching self doubt–before we became the keepers of these new little souls.

Sometimes I think of parenting like those Tom Cruise movies that never should’ve been made. Your mission? Usher these small beings through the minefields of child predators, weird ass accidents involving umbrellas in eyes and falls down stairs, drugs, premature sex, and whatever Sony dreams up to corrupt youth in ways we of another generation can only stare, slack-jawed at, until they are big enough to usher a few little beings along themselves.

Parenting is a long walk through deep woods.

Except when it’s not.

Except when it’s a picnic by a sunlit stream. That’s why we keep doing it, isn’t it? For those picnic moments?

Just the other day my little one was hugging me and he murmured, “I could do dis forevah,” and I thought, One day he’s going to be able to pronounce t-h, and I wanted to hold him by the sunlit stream–forevah.

As parents we know that what feels like a marathon will really be over way faster than it would take me at least to run twenty-six impossible miles.

Writing a novel is a lot like parenting.

It has its peaks, the moments when the words are coming and you feel like you could do this forevah. It has its times in the middle where you can’t believe you will ever get through.

And then one day you’re done, you’ve written that exciting climax, and now it’s time to pen the words ‘the end’.

They’re off, to college, to homes of their own, to points unknown.

We’re out of the woods.

But oh, those trees were beautiful.