What I Know Now

When I was little, I remember asking my mother, “You know how people say, If I knew then what I know now …? Could you go ahead and tell me all those things, so I’ll know them?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” she said, to my great disappointment. Why, I wondered, doesn’t she just tell me?

Now, of course, I know a lot of things I wish I’d known earlier—including precisely what my mother couldn’t explain: Experience is the teacher that words can never quite be …

… and one of the (many) things to appreciate about growing older.

Photo of my grandmother, Lessel, and mother, Judie