Mother's Day kick to the heart.

Alex brought home a card she'd made at school. Her handprint is on the front in fuchsia paint.

"Mom," she said earnestly, "our hands are on there so you'll always remember when we were three or four, how cute we were."

Obviously that came from a teacher explaining the craft at school. But then Alex took it a step further. She ducked under my arm and gazed up into my face.

"Mom, when I'm a really really big grownup and you don't ever see me again, you'll always remember how cute I was."

"You don't think you'll visit me when you're a grownup?"

"Maybe not."

Every snarling, angry teenager screaming obscenities at her mother was once a three- or four-year-old presenting a handmade Mother's Day card. Every adult distant and alienated from his parents was once a cute, loving preschooler.

If you read things written by parents who don't have good relationships with their teenage or adult children, there's always an overpowering sense of bewilderment. How did the sweet, trusting little kid grow into the angry, resentful adult? Before, reading, I always thought that there must be something they'd done wrong and weren't mentioning. But now I think that a lot of the time parents just don't know. They think they're doing well enough. Not perfect, right, but adequate.

I called Alex in to me just now. "Honey, even when you're a really big grownup, I hope you'll always want to see me and be with me sometimes."

"Mmm," she said sympathetically. She let me hug her. Then she twirled away from me to tell Michael something about a plastic egg she'd filled with coins.

(no subject)

[Poll #1397675]

NB: Don't worry, this is not something I am considering doing to my children. Although the three-month-old cusses like a sailor.

On the topic of swearing.

I don't remember ever being punished for swearing. My mother responded to even mild profanity with a calm, but firm, "I don't like that kind of language." My recollection is she said this instead of, not in addition to, responding to the content of what we were upset or complaining about, so eventually we figured out that swearing can derail communication.

My father used mild profanity in front of us, and did not object to hearing it when my mother or other potentially offendable people weren't around. Lesson #2 learned: different language for different contexts.

But there are two incidents in my childhood that really stand out, in which my parents taught me extremely valuable lessons about swearing.

Incident #1: We were on vacation. My father took my 11-year-old brother and another boy out on our little Day Sailer, and without warning the mast snapped. When they got back to the dock, the boys reported, awed, that when the mast broke my father uttered only two words: "Oh, dear."

Lesson learned: Sometimes the most impressive thing is the profanity you don't use.

Incident #2: One year my father absent-mindedly forgot to sign up at work for his vacation weeks. This was a huuuge deal, because we had already reserved and put a deposit on a rental cottage, and there was a chance that we'd just miss our vacation, while paying the deposit fee, if Dad didn't secure the right to take the proper weeks off. (Turns had to be taken, so he couldn't take just any week.)

My mother, who never swore and never tolerated the use of words like "hell" in her presence, discovered Dad's lapse in the middle of family dinner. There was a silence. Then she turned to him and said, "You asshole!"

I remember nothing that happened after that, because the moment itself was so apocalyptic in my mind. But I'll bet you that every single member of my family remembers when she said it, and why. And you damn betcha my father fixed the vacation thing and never ever repeated that mistake. I have never heard her utter another curse word ever again.

Lesson learned: If you are known to never swear, people will pay attention if you do. If you swear regularly, the words don't have that power.