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2001-05-07 | 11:06 p.m.

I thought I could make little girls who would turn away from princesses and ponies, and little boys who would eschew trucks and cars and "motorcykes," but it didn't turn out that way. I don't buy the notion that they're just made that way, as so many others have told me. I just dropped the ball. Wasn't vigilant enough. I suppose I was afraid that if I didn't give them roughly the childhood I had, I couldn't predict the shape of their rebellion. Because I'm a control freak. But I do hate to think I've set them back.

(Duff sometimes worries that they'll be more susceptible to cults than other people's kids because we haven't given them a religion to explore and ultimately reject.)

If I can find the courage to take them out of their classrooms, perhaps I can make up for some of my failings. But right now I'm afraid they are almost cookie cutter children. Their opinions are unconsidered, sometimes uncouth, usually borrowed from their peers, and once in a while I see proof that their hearts are indifferent to suffering.

Of course I would defend them against such accusations if they were made by anyone else. But as their mother I reserve the right to assess the condition of their character. And if you suspect I don't love them unconditionally, you're very wrong.

Sometimes I imagine that I have died and the kids go to live with Duff's parents and they don't even get exposed to the ideas that were most important to me. It makes me feel a little sad, but really, what can I do? I'm dead. So I thought I would try writing a last will and testament that actually describes the intellectual legacy I would like them to inherit from me, which is, after all, much more valuable than any material object I own. (No, really--hardly anything I own is valuable.) Just in case I don't make it all the way around the ol' game board.

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