Nothing quite reminds you of your failings like being a mother, mostly because you’ve replicated children who, because of those prenatal vitamins, your conscientious protein intake in the last trimester and the bedtime stories and books you encouraged them to read, have extraordinary verbal skills which they will use at every vulnerable moment to remind you in great specificity, again and again.

While on one hand, you might occasionally be depressed about that, you could also tell yourself, “Wow, what incredibly expressive, passionate and articulate offspring I’ve raised! I’m so glad I put such effort into stimulating their intellects!” It might help, you never know.

It can be an upward slog as they get older, because you eventually find it more difficult to keep a sense of humor about these things. Whereas once I would say brightly, “I’m so glad to hear you attack me like that, because at this stage of your emotional and psychological development, you should be rebelling against my values and this means I’ve done a really good job raising you!”, now I just say, “I’m sorry.” Because I am. (And then I think to myself, “You’ll just have to take that up with your therapist, since I don’t have access to a time machine and can’t undo the past.”)

My kids were truly delightful children whose presence brought me much joy, pretty much until the moment they moved out and went to college. Okay, there was that adolescent phase where they were beating the crap out of each other so much, I dragged them off to a family counselor to see if it was “normal” (the oldest sat there and refused to say anything the entire time), but they eventually got to the point where they could go weeks at a time without physically attacking each other, and that made me happy.

They had a lot of seething hostility toward their father, and when he died a few years ago, there was a rapid and seamless transition of all that anger over to me. (Which was a bit of a shock, even though I expected it. I used to tell them they only idealized me because they compared me to their father, that I was just a normal human being with lots of human failings. Apparently I convinced them.)

Anyway, they’re adults now. They like me sometimes but more often than not, they don’t. Most interactions (although not all) come with exasperated sighs, much eyerolling and at least a short list of my shortcomings, and that can be depressing. (My male friends tell me not to worry: “I hated my mother at that age, too,” and advise me they really won’t understand until they have kids of their own, since that’s what made them realize their own mothers really weren’t in the Bad Mothers Hall of Fame.)

But I digress. The fact is, there are many things I might have done differently, but they’re things I couldn’t possibly have done any differently, given those particular circumstances. That’s the bitch of it - middle age is when you realize that just about everyone would have made better choices, but they didn’t know how. You can’t make someone see when they’re blind, after all, and being angry at them for not seeing is wasted time and energy.

Like every mother, I only did the best I could at the time. (Sometimes I just fucked up, plain and simple. But I never set out to do it.)

This is not to say I regret having my kids, because I don’t. It’s only that nothing really prepares you for being a mother, and no one ever really warns you about the eternal burden of guilt you’ll carry. You can’t read your way into that understanding, you can’t train for it.

That’s why I try to do what I can for the young mothers I know. I listen, I offer to babysit, I encourage them to take some time to take care of themselves. “They’re going to blame you for everything anyway, so there’s no point to killing yourself,” I tell them. Motherhood is full of lonely moments where you wonder why all those other mothers seems so utterly thrilled to be making three dozen cupcakes from scratch after a long, long day, and here is my answer: Those women are pretending. Those are the kind of women who end up drowning their babies in the bathtub while their husbands are away on extended business trips. They pretend, and finally something snaps.

Don’t be one of those women. If you’re not pretending, you’re in a much healthier place. I’m of the Roseanne Barr school of motherhood (only without the multiple personalities): “If he comes home at five o’clock and those kids are still alive, I’ve done my job.”

So if you’re a mother, today I salute you. (If you’re my mother, I also take you out for brunch.) And if you’re a father (barring, you know, heroin addiction or the aforementioned psychosis on the part of your wife), you should fall down on your knees and kiss her very toes. Because you really have no idea.

And then you should take the kids out of the house for the entire day, before you come home and cook dinner.