Fragile

I love Lisa Belkin’s Motherlode column yesterday. Love it. I had tears running down my face at work reading it. It touched many soft spots for me, including my deep awareness of the fragility of it all, my inability to really enjoy life in the moment, and the way that parenting humbles you, making you aware of how smug you were to assume you could control most things about these little people.

If I were to write my list today, I think the three sections would mirror the list of soft spots again. There is something so simultaneously fragile and sturdy about these little children’s bodies. When I was pregnant with Grace, I remember vividly thinking: ok, just have to get to 12 weeks without miscarrying … then, please God let me have an ok AFP result … then, let there be 10 fingers and 10 toes at the ultrasound … then the delivery … then you realize, like a lightning bolt: It never ends, this risk.

At any moment Grace and Whit could meet with danger, either through an accident or through development of illness. When thinking about this post last night, I thought initially: I have chosen not to live in fear of these risks. And then I thought about it, mentally hitting the delete key until the sentence was struck out. I don’t know that for me it’s a choice; it feels more like instinct, something gleaned by osmosis from my own confident, comfortable, capable mother. Thank you, Mum.

In a weird confluence of thoughts about risk, the Natasha Richardson story yesterday really got to me, activating that same sense of: Wow, there is danger everywhere, and yet we cannot really anticipate or prepare for it. How devastating that story is to me, for some reason – the difficulty of reconciling a small tumble on a bunny slope, from which she walked away, with the news that she is likely brain dead … how does that happen?

There is nothing I can say on the topic of how fast it goes that is more succinct and perfect than that old adage about parenting: The days are long but the years are short.

And then. Oh, how children cause the mighty and smug to fall! I remember being incredibly proud of myself when Grace, at her three-year old checkup, told Dr. Rick that broccoli was her favorite food (totally unprompted by me, who actually loathes broccoli). My good sleeper, my good eater, my generally sunny and cooperative child. Sure, she had terrible colic and screamed for the first three months of her life. But I barely remember those months and as I’ve averred before, it may well have been me who had the colic.

And then Whit. I think every parent has a particular dimension on which this come-to-Jesus occurs. For me, it is food. The child eats only hamburger, chicken (in nugget form), and noodles. He won’t even eat such childhood staples as applesauce and raisins. No. I hide a pea under a forkful of chicken nugget and he chews, thinks, and then reaches into his mouth to extract the pea. The child’s sense of taste is like a pregnant lady’s sense of smell.

Anyway, the point is: we think we know it all, and then we learn we know nothing. I am fairly sure I know less about this whole journey than I did 6.5 years ago – I know I am certain of much less. You accumulate stories and shed stereotypes. You accept exceptions and nuances and drop assumptions. This is growth, people, isn’t it? Doesn’t this sound like – shocker! – maturity? Adulthood? Wow. Who knew.