In honor of the eldest’s birthday, a little walk down memory lane back to when I only had one child and, apparently, a vendetta against proper capitalization. It seems that my earliest posts around motherhood didn’t have the same nostalgic flavor of today’s as there was no word when I delivered and no first birthday thoughts. Oh, how times and authors have changed. The original post was here.
yup. he took a tumble. and i was standing right there. i turned as he bopped the first step and got there almost in time before his head hit the floor.
it’s nothing i’d care to repeat viewing. i felt awful. he was mad, sad, hurt and just wanted to lay his head on my chest and cry. so we did for a little bit. then we went outside (no tomatoes to look at so we just went for a walk).
i had some time to process this. i had called KM to ask if i was a bad mom because i kinda felt like it. good moms stay closer right? good moms don’t let their kids fall down the stairs? maybe good moms always keep one hand on the kid’s back so they can react quicker and catch their kids.
i’m not a believer in the common thought that parents have a corner on God’s perspective. there are plenty of people who don’t have kids (or are not married, for that fact – another common one) that understand way more about God than i. but as i was asking myself if i were a bad mom i found myself circling that very common philosophical question “if God is good then why do bad things happen?”
as i thought “if i were a good mom, henry wouldn’t have fallen” i could see why people say “if he were a good God, i wouldn’t have experienced XYZ.” but by the end of the walk i could tell you that it’s just not true. and i’m not just trying to defend my parenting abilities.
after all i. was. right. there. i didn’t leave to go get the groceries. i wasn’t more concerned with my own agenda. he couldn’t say “why have you left me?!” because i didn’t. i was on the floor the moment he was. so the fact that something bad happened does not negate my mere existence.
and, most of all, i didn’t “let” it happen to him to “teach him a lesson.” i did teach henry how to go down the stairs and it involved me showing him to crawl backward -knee knee foot foot.
the poor guy fell down the stairs because it’s a part of the human experience. we can do things to try to prevent it, we can adjust, but we cannot completely avoid the falls. the only way i could do that is to eliminate the entire experience of stairs. and what a flat, boring existence that would be. (did i mention that H loves his stairs? i think he’s training for the olympics)
sometimes we just have to be thankful that, while falling down the stairs does happen, we do have someone to hold us, kiss the boo boo and take us on a walk on a b-e-a-utiful day to help the healing process begin.