kids alive
When did parenting become reduced to the bare-bones task of keeping them alive?
When I first started full-time mothering, I was convinced it was “the highest calling.” I envisioned soul-profiting days of Bible memory and life skills. I was even under the illusion that I’d be implementing praying the hours with my kids at our icon corner, in between bouts of meaningful tasks in our media-free society.
My perfect parenthood world came crashing down around me on Friday (shortly after opting out of morning prayers in lieu of Blue’s Clues). I was tidying up the kids bathroom with a little Windex wipe-down, and the kids were happily playing together about five feet away in the neighboring room. Their squawks and squeels made me smile as I scrubbed the watermelon toothpaste from the counter, peeking in every few minutes to watch them scale the side of the newly assembled bunk bed with great determination and delight. “Be careful” I cautioned, and then went back to my cleaning, while happiness was still on my side.
But then I heard an unusually strained squawk & squeel. One that, had I not been mere feet away, I would have never heard. I jutted into the room, “Everything okay . . ?”
To my horror, Eden was hanging from the side of the bunk, suspended by a rope that noosed her neck. She was an inch from the ground, but dangling, caught in her descent by a four-year-old’s determined grasp. “I’m pulling you up, Eden, come on!” he was shouting excitedly, completely oblivious to her struggle for breath.
Expeditiously, I scooped her up, pulled the knot loose, and drew her to me. Coughing and sputtering, and still grasping at her raw red neck, she could barely utter a word. “Lord have mercy” I whispered, holding my daughter silently, frightfully, too tightly until I began to cry the words as the thought of near-death struck me deeper still. In the blink of an eye I could have lost my daughter. I was unnerved.
I didn’t have the stamina to spank my son, who had started bawling from the top bunk. I couldn’t let go of my daughter, who’s little body was still taut, her heart pounding, her eyes filled with fear. I studied meticulously the pink ribbon of tender skin around her neck.
Gradually, tears watered our frightened embrace with unimaginable relief.
Thanks be to God, she was alive, and how precious this fragile little life was to me.
I have always taken it for granted that my home is a safe-haven. A place protected from harm. While I am certain my “baby proofing” could be more thorough, I have never thought of my home as a danger-zone, let alone potential crime-scene. I have never thought of myself as a negligent parent, either. Fluctuating between attentive and distracted perhaps, but never negligent.
All this has now changed for me. If I ever put myself on a parenting pedestal, I’ve been completely knocked off. My so-called “agenda” has been completely stripped. To be single-minded in my effort not to multi-task is one thing. Choosing to make important what is really important, another. But if I can just keep my kids alive while they’re in my care, it will be a most blessed accomplishment. One that, in and of itself, is a very high calling!
