I've been meditating on this passage a LOT this week

[pegkerr]

From Lois McMaster Bujold's The Vor Game:

[after Miles Vorkosigan made a difficult, strategic decision to disobey a possible criminal order from his superior officer and ended up getting cashiered out of his military command, he has to go home and face his father, Aral Vorkosigan, the regent of Barrayar] Miles looked up at his father. "Did ... I do the right thing, sir? Last night?"

"Yes," said the count simply. "A right thing. Perhaps not the best of all possible right things. Three days from now you may think of a cleverer tactic, but you were the man on the ground at the time. I try not to second-guess my field commanders."

That is what parenting has been like lately. You think when you bring this darling angelic baby home from the hospital, that if you can just figure out how to keep this darling angelic baby from squalling her lungs out and sleep all the way through the night, your troubles will be over. But it's not like that. Your challenges become greater as the child grows older, and wouldn't you know it, there is no owner's manual. There is no one to tell you, when you have to make difficult decisions for your child, that you are doing the right thing. That has sometimes been extremely hard for me, even perhaps the hardest thing of all about being a parent. But it's comforting to reflect, when I'm deep in the trenches of parenthood, making the tough decisions that get me reviled by this child that I love, that I can do a right thing. Not the definitive right thing, because perhaps there just isn't one.

This week, I'm hanging onto that all that I can.

Edited to add: Dagnabbit, why aren't any of the Vorkosigan books available for the Nook?

Comments

[pegkerr]

Awesome! Thank you! I've downloaded them all and put them on my Nook. I am so grateful!