What if they mostly remember the back of my head?

Sometimes I wonder what motherhood would have been like without the internet. I fell into both new worlds at the exact same time; we got our first modem the week I quit my job in anticipation of Polly’s birth. I became a stay-at-home mom and an AOL addict simultaneously. I learned to nurse my newborn sitting in front of the computer. I shared every gurgle and coo with the new friends I’d made on the pregnancy boards. Later we bailed from AOL and formed our own yahoogroup, and we’ve been in almost daily contact ever since.

I still have yet to meet some of them in person, but those women know more about my daily ups and downs during my first decade of motherhood than my own mother does.

Now it’s happening with blogs, too, only in a weirder, stalkerish way. I read your blogs, you other mothers, and I get all caught up in the milestones of children I will probably never see in real life. I worry about when Annika will get her new liver, and I go gooey over the antics of the babies, and sometimes—I freely admit this—I tell real-life friends a hilarious story about “my friend’s kid,” “friend” being shorthand for “person whose blog I read but don’t really know from Eve, but I’m sure we would adore each other if we met in person, or maybe not because you never can tell.” You could really bog down a humorous anecdote with an intro like that, so it’s easier just to say “friend.”

But I digressed from my original thought, which had to do with the way internet discourse has shaped me as a mother. Sometimes I catch myself rushing through a fabulous moment with my children because I am so eager to WRITE about it and capture its fabulousness in print before I forget it. It’s an extension of the way taking video of Christmas morning can spoil the sponteneity and naturalness of Christmas morning. Am I so preoccupied with chronicling my adventures with my children that I shortchange the adventure itself?

In some ways I do think e-lists and blogging make me a better mother. I do notice the miracle of the small moment because of this long-term habit of sharing such moments with my online pals. And some days I think I behave better because I write the truth, even when it hurts to do so, and I want to have something good to write, so I try harder to be fun and connected.

But it can be a kind of vicious circle. In striving to be fully present for my children, I work at bringing magic to the mundane, I really do. And then when it works, and the magic is there, I want to write about it, capture it, get it down so I won’t forget how magical these years are. I love them so much, these small people surrounding me. I want to fill their days with joy, and I mean that in the rawest, non-Hallmarky sense. Joy. A major requirement of a joyful childhood is, I firmly believe, that the people with whom the children spend the majority of their time are themselves joyful. And for these kids, that’s me. They want me, they want me to delight in their company.

I do, I really do! So much so that I can’t wait to sneak away from them and write about how much I love being with them.

Motherhood is a study in paradoxes.

Would I be a better mother if I were just living with my kids instead of writing about them?

Would you believe I just told the six-year-old, “Hang on, honey, I just need to finish this sentence”?