Kathryn Wharton

“What was a woman to do after being a Mother? You grow a child for nine months, and from the moment they are born, they are your entire existence. It is your job to feed them, cloth them and keep them alive. Yes, life goes on, it is easier at times, it is harder sometimes. But, they do, children do become your entire existence. They are your blood, when you sleep, when they eat, when you go out, when your home. You literally never stop thinking about them. Then gradually as they age, as you age, you are supposed to raise them to raise themselves. Yes, there are many times, they want nothing to do with you! Yes, there are times they can’t be without you! But, all in all, you are their back bone, their life, their existence. And in the end…if you did it well, yes well, they leave you. They leave the nest, the proverbial nest. And you are supposed to be happy, and proud. You have done a good job, and your twenty-year job is now over! Yes, they will come, and go in the next few years, needing you sometime, not hearing from them for long periods of time, and often other times. All in all, what are we supposed to do with ourselves? While our little babies go and find themselves? While they go and find out who they want to be. Not who we want them to be necessarily, but who they turn out to be. All of this seems to happen so quickly, not over night, but before you know it your child, your baby, is twenty-something. This just about sums up where I am now.”
― Kathryn Wharton, Garden in the South Battery