The Unknown

As I've mentioned in an early post, one spends a large portion of one's time as a parent just worrying about The Unknown--those terrible things that could, heaven forbid, happen in some near or distant future. And one devotes a lot of energy to avoiding any disasters, major or minor, that could, perhaps, befall one's child.

But nothing will keep a child from experiencing some form of injury at some point in their babyhood and toddlerhood.

The trick, as a parent, is to live in just enough fear to keep oneself alert, but not so much fear that one becomes paralyzed and cannot function semi-normally. Like soldiers in a war, we must let our fear train us to perform at a higher level.

I'm not sure that I've been totally successful at this; sometimes, before falling asleep, I'm literally wincing and grimacing to myself as I imagine some mishap, for instance, my son falling off the couch because I wasn't holding him tightly enough. He's the typical boy entering late babyhood: his desire for exploration often outpaces his bodily capacity. He'd do ten backflips off the couch in a row, landing squarely on his head, if we let him out of our grasp for even ten seconds.

The Unknown constantly filters into my conscious and subconscious mind. But not the healthy Unknown, not the Unknown that leads to new discoveries. Not the Unknown of the flaneur, but the claustrophobia-inducing Unknown of the soldier at the front lines.