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.
Congratulations for continuing to extend your talents.
I was down at the beach the other day, and was surprised to see three wild ducks attending a human picnic. They were waddling around in among human feet, and other body parts, with complete disregard for potential danger from much larger beings. Bits of food, I suppose, but still surprising to see them shrugging off generations of caution.
Jim T
Jim – That level of habituation to human presence is a bit disconcerting, isn’t it? We saw animals and birds in the Galapagos who had no learned fear of humans, but it’s rare outside that isolation context.