I have to confess that I’ve wasted a great deal of time, as a mother, worrying. When my kids were little (which, I have to admit, was before the internet), I constantly had my head buried in a copy of Doctor Mom. Every cry, sneeze, stomach ache or earache made me flip through the dog-eared pages in fear of evidence of a dreaded disease. (It’s a blessing that WebMD didn’t exist back then.)

When my kids reached school-age, I concerned about them hitting developmental milestones. I obsessed over words mispronounced or misspelled, math problems misunderstood or their inability to write a cohesive sentence. (Their parents are both journalism majors! Shouldn’t writing be part of their genetic code?!)

As middle-school approached, I worried about social issues. Who were they hanging around with? Why aren’t they going out more? Why do they want to go out so much? Why are they obsessed with how they look? Why aren’t they obsessed with how they look?

Then came high school. Because I was not the head cheerleader, prom queen or valedictorian, I had my share of high school issues. And, because I’m not a Stepford mom, I worry about my kids encountering those same issues. My philosophy is I’m here and I’ll help them make better choices, right? Wrong. The issues are totally different and so I worry even more. In fact, I worry because I don’t even know what to worry about.

College is a whole other ball of worry wax! Will my kids get into a good college? Will they like college? Will they excel in college or fade into the woodwork and barely graduate? What if they get a freaky roommate who stays up all night or brings “overnight guests?”

Can you see why this is exhausting?

So here’s what I do. Sometimes, because there seems to be no end to the worry, I focus on one thing: my kids, at home, safe and sound. Now that they drive, this is a bigger deal than you think.

And so, this Thanksgiving week, I’m thankful to have my kids at home with me.

What, me worry?

There are moments in motherhood that they don’t tell you about when you’re all glowy and postpartemy. If they did, you might just hand the baby back and say: “You know what, thanks, but I guess I’ll pass.”

Those moments are the ones when you do a gut check and say to yourself: “I don’t think I can do this. I have no clue what to do next.”

Motherhood has no instruction manual. In fact, I’d liken the moment that they hand that beautiful, stunning child to you, to the moment you pass your driver’s test. (Something for which there is an instruction manual. Hmm…that’s ironic, isn’t it?) In the blink of an eye, you go from something you wished for, hoped for, worked for, to a moment where you look at people and say: “Wait, what? Seriously? I’m not sure I’m ready for this.”

Of course you’re all madly in love and wanting to show off the world’s most beautiful child. But deep inside, there’s that nagging hint of doubt that makes you wonder just a teeny bit whether that potential to screw this thing up will ever present itself.

And as the child grows, and little things happen, you wonder again: “Do I have the right stuff?” Or, you think the way I do: “WWCBD (What would Carol Brady do?)”

Growing up, glued to the TV set, I thought the Brady Bunch’s Carol Brady was my maternal idol. When she wasn’t rockin’ her shag hairdo or cutting flowers while gazing at her artificial lawn, she was dispensing incredible nuggets of wisdom to her beautiful, blended family. While Alice did all the real work, Carol stirred something in a pot (making us think she actually cooked) and then had time to sit with the kids while they ate their wholesome after-school snack.

As a naïve and impressionable child, I just assumed that I would parent the way that Carol Brady parented – with style and grace and a kick-ass housekeeper.

Big surprise, Carol and Alice were pure fiction. The only way to really be a parent is to roll up your sleeves and get dirty. Sometimes horribly dirty. To be there when the kids come home and fall apart. To NOT have all the answers and to question virtually everything that you and your kids do. To discipline and be hated for it…but to still be there the next morning. To lose sleep because you let your mind wander to the worst-case scenario.

Truth be told, I tend to be kind of a negative person. If I’ve made a decision, I’m often guessing it’s the wrong one. I just assume that every other mom has cooked and cleaned and parented better than I have. But once in a while, my kids will do something that gives me a glimmer of hope. They make me feel, in that moment, that even if I don’t have the right stuff, at least they do. And to me, that’s good enough.