After raising 5 kids, I wasn't prepared for how quiet life would feel. I miss the chaos.
The author raised five kids, and now that they are adults, she misses the chaos. Maria Korneeva/Getty Images I didn't plan to have a big family, but it became the center of my life. I raised my kids mostly on my own after my husband left our family. Now that they're grown and scattered, I miss the chaos of our daily life. I didn't plan to have 5 children. I wasn't even sure I wanted to get married. I envisioned a life modeled after my childhood heroine, Mary Richards, the fictional associate producer at WJM-TV, played by Mary Tyler Moore. Yes, I was the girl who stayed in her dorm room on Saturday nights to watch each episode. That served me well because I did work for several years in television and eventually landed in Hollywood. That's where I met my husband, a recently resettled Cambodian refugee who worked with me on translating a film. We got married a year later, and I got pregnant just about immediately. Of my 5 children, all but 2 were surprises...