And Then You Do

When your child falls, as Annalee did last night, there is a tendency to question your parenting skills. Because parents enjoy more power over their children than over anyone else in their lives, it's easy to go overboard with this questioning, as though it is God questioning God during some hideous phase of the Inquisition. "What were you thinking when you invented gravity? Didn't you foresee this child's terrible fall?" "What were you thinking when you invented concrete? Not a very good idea, in the end, was it?"

We were sitting on the front porch when it happened, I with my guitar in my lap, and Kim with a glass of lime-aid that she and Annalee had just made in her hand. I was singing songs, and Annalee was run-dancing, as joyous as we had seen her. We knew she was tired, and we'll kick ourselves for weeks. On the last of Annalee's trips up the concrete path from the front door to the sidewalk, she tumbled at full speed, getting her hands out in front of her but taking far too much of the impact with her forehead.

The air in this house is saturated with love most of the time, but last night, when Annalee woke up hungry around mightnight and the three of us had some pizza before putting Annalee back down, the air was super-saturated. You think you can't love them any more than you already do, and then you do.