Breakable

This afternoon we took a family walk to a nearby park. We try to do this several times a week as it gives AC and me a chance to talk while Sam rides quietly strapped to AC’s chest. As we strolled around the periphery of the park, knee-deep in some weighty discussion, I misjudged a step down from the sidewalk and slammed hands-first onto the gravel.

Ouch.

Except that instead of saying ouch I yelped a few choice expletives (entirely approriate according to my new rule of no casual swearing. There was nothing casual about this road burn.) AC examined my palms and declared that we’d better go right back home to clean me up. Sam was completely unfazed, which fascinated me as she had just witnessed her mother falling and screaming in pain. I wonder when children develop empathy?

Anyway, as we headed back towards our street, this shakey sensation climbed up out of my gut and lodged in my throat: what if I had been carrying Sam in the baby bjorn? Would she have been slammed face first in the gravel? Would her little hands now be embedded with road debris… and her eyes? her face? Would I have managed to turn my body and hit the road on my side or shoulder? Would I have taken the step more slowly & carefully in the first place? Or would we now be rushing to the ER?

I can’t shake these thoughts. Back home as I picked the dirt and gravel out of my searing palms, I kept imagining that it was Sam’s soft baby flesh. Her uncalloused hands. Her unsunburned face. She is still so new. I know she will experience physical pain. I know she has to. I know that at some point I have to let her. I know it is so cliché to want to protect her from everything. I know all these things, AND YET I still want to find a way to absorb her road debris.

My hands are a mess. They burn like bloody hell (still appropriate). And I am so thankful that she doesn’t know this pain yet.

Heaven help me when she walks…