If motherhood has taught me anything, it is that I cannot change my children, I can only change myself. Try as I might, I can’t shape either one of them to my desires or designs, but I can choose, moment by moment and day by day, my own reaction to who they are. So perhaps my real job now, and in the year ahead, isn’t to direct my sons’ lives, but to work on becoming more thoughtful and deliberate about my own.