Going back in time

I listened to an interview the other night that Terry Gross did with Sherman Alexie.  He was talking about his love for his children and how devoted he is to them, to demonstrating his love for them:

GROSS: Do you hug your kids a lot?
ALEXIE: I am overtly huggy with my kids.
GROSS: (Laughter) OK.
ALEXIE: I kiss them a lot. I tell them I love them. I'm on the road, so I'm texting them constantly. I'm going to start crying again but, you know, I, you know, we like to think that as parents our love for our children is our love for our children as it is. But in being affectionate with my children, of making them aware of how much I love them is also me attempting to fill the absence from my own childhood.
In fact, as I write in the book a poem, you know, I wish in the poem that I could defy physics, defy time and go back in time and be my mother's parent and adore her as a parent in the way I doubt she was ever adored. So I adore my children, as you should. (italics mine)

Such a beautiful thought.  For of course, for his mother to have loved him sufficiently, she too would have needed to be adored, as a baby, as a child.