Keeping the Faith

Becoming a parent changes you.  You can take all the birthing classes, read every how-to book on raising a happy healthy baby, but the one thing that the "experts" fail to mention every single time?  Is the moment you have a child, the world through a parent’s eyes becomes a perilous place.

Choking, SIDs, head injuries, ticks, falling out of windows, falling downstairs (the list goes on and on in my head)-you realize what a hazardous world we live in.  I never considered myself a worrier before I had a child, but after the birth of our son my heart feels so fragile.

I can no longer watch the news.  It first started when Jack's bedtime routine coincided with the evening news.  Now he goes to bed a bit later, but to be honest I don't miss it.  Once in a while I will feel the need to catch up on current events and afterwards I can feel the paranoia building, the gnawing ache in my stomach and it ends with me vowing that I will never let my son out of the house again.  And if I must do so, it will be in a Kevlar body suit.

After the Connecticut shooting, I remember bringing Jack to school the next day feeling like I was dropping him off for the first time when he was just an infant.  I didn’t want to let him out of my sight.  I squeezed him a little tighter and held on a little longer as I tried to stay strong and let him go.  .

The world is a scary place, and I know eventually I will need to release him in this vast frightening world.   Whenever I feel that panic churning inside or the urge to wrap my child in bubble wrap, I remember this quote by Gandhi and I find solace:

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”