For a large chunk of my professional writing career, I wrote about children. I interviewed experts on crawling and sleeping and temper tantrums. I shared what I learned with the readers of Parents or Working Mother or some other magazine. Then I wrote a book about how too much expert advice can make us crazy. Suffice it to say, I didn’t write as much about child rearing after that! But I think about children every day because I have three daughters and because creating a family with Tom continues to be the great adventure of my life.

So this post is about glee. It’s about the soundtrack of the TV show Glee, which blared from the car stereo when I drove to Maryland yesterday. Celia and I listen to this when we’re driving together, and I’ve come to love it for that reason. The night before, at a crazy busy restaurant in Herndon, we bought a schmaltzy Austrian accordion CD because we sat next to the Viennese accordion player – and Suzanne is studying in Vienna. And last but not least, as I drove back yesterday from Maryland, I listened to the U.S.-Canada Olympic gold-medal match, because Claire has gotten me excited about ice hockey.

When our children are young, we guide them and shape them; we are their world. As they grow up, they take us into worlds we could not have imagined. They remind us what life was like when we were just coming alive to it. And that, in itself, is reason for glee.