Dear Mom And Dad, Now That I'm a Mom, I Resent You Even More

Let's just say your crappy childhood was a few acres of dry foliage, just there, not lush, but not dangerous. Having a child is the casually flicked, still burning Camel Light of a half-drunken hobo that sets it ablaze. Call all the helicopters you want, this fire won't be contained any time soon.

What I mean is, what was once the imperfect but mostly benign landscape of your psyche, is now a raging fire of newly searing childhood grudges.

I suspect I'm like lots of new moms. We love our babies fantastically and unabashedly, but they are that hobo's cigarette butt, igniting old feelings. If your childhood was less than perfect, you are probably following me with the fire thing. You spend a lifetime processing anger and resentment at your parents if they phoned it in (or worse, just plain stank) and you think you're a grown-up now, and they did their best, and you can move on and make peace and let them stay in your guest room and send them baby pictures and email them with updates and maintain the desiccated but basically comfortable relationship you had with your earliest caretakers.

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