When parents talk about having a child who is ill or struggling, nonparents often take the wrong message. They think, Thank God I was spared all that pain. If I can’t order up the precise specifications for my child, the condition in which he emerges, the choices he’ll make, if I can’t be assured that he’ll skirt the dangers that await him, maybe it’s better not to have children at all.
Those of us who know the airless terror of the 10 steps between the second you first glimpse your child’s surgeon through the glass doors and the moment he’s standing in front of you, delivering the verdict—we don’t think this way. Each time one of ours is ill or in pain, we think, Thank God I am here for him.
One time, stranded in Halifax on a rainy weekend, I attended a lecture about spiders. Did you know that not all spiders build webs? Some jump, and some hunt, and some build other kinds of traps. Fascinating creatures. Even if I still don’t like them.
Jim T
Jim – HOW FAR CAN THEY JUMP? Oh, sorry, is my arachnophobia showing? A lecture on spiders, eh? Strange, the things we do when desperate.
Agree with you, Isabel. English spiders are the worst, if benign. John and I were sitting on either sides of a woven, sisal rug. I heard, then saw, a huge spider making its way across it. I said to John, “What are we gonna do about that spider,” and he said, “What do you mean ‘we’?” (It took a shovel to kill it and clean up the mess.)
I’m thankful that John didn’t say, “They usually have a mate.”
Barbara – Yuck. Maybe this should be a screening test for potential spouses: Do they share our phobias? “Yes” might be good (they will empathize, and not put us into nasty situations); “No” might be better, as they will step up when we can’t.