A Scare for Mommy
I have been considering how much I have learned from my mistakes over the course of my lifetime. When I was a teenager, I learned to drive a far distance from the car in front of me after crashing my dad’s Jeep while playing hooky from school. As an adult, I learned not to rush and to be aware after I knocked off a stock pot hanging from a rafter while putting away groceries and broke my nose. Yet, even with these lessons, I still understood that sometimes whether you survive or not is just a matter of luck. When I had a kid, that thought scared me so much, I tried to just push it out of my mind.
However, today, that realization came back and so did the fear. One minute I was watching my daughter climb the benches around our fire pit. I went back to weeding the flower beds; as usual getting lost in the dirt. When I looked up, she was nowhere to be seen. I walked over to where she last was, but I couldn’t see her. About to circle the house, I heard a mischevious laugh from above and looked up to find my 19 month old daughter at the top step of a rickety old ladder to the attic, 10 feet above. My heart stopped. Her face reflected my panic. For the first time, I climbed those stairs, feeling each piece of wood beneath me crack and yawn with age. I sat, grabbed her and slowly climbed back down to tell my husband who promptly built a fence around the stairs.
If my instincts had not kicked in, if I had waited a little longer to look for her, if she had begun climbing down… the ifs can haunt a mother. I am reminded of how fragile our existence is.
Share on FacebookTags: accidents, babies, children, fear, luck, motherhood, parenting
Day in the Life | admin May 23, 2009
