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.
Ah, Joni Mitchell. A National Treasure all on her own.
Barbara – Indeed, she is.