on roller skating…and protecting our children…

Madi and I had spent the last hour carefully scooting around the fringes of the roller skating rink when she asked if she could skate by herself. She was doing a fantastic job, considering it was her first time, but I was reluctant to let go of her hand. She didn’t give me much of a choice as she pulled her hand away from me and glided away. Images of broken wrists and concussions splashed across my mind as I hurried to catch up to her. I skated by her side, flinging my arm over to support her when she looked unsteady and grabbing her hand to keep her from sprawling on the floor.

She became more and more brave and I became more and more paranoid as she skated faster and more perilously. I was certain that the moment I looked away or stopped paying attention that she would bite it and ruin roller skating (and her front teeth) permanently.

But then I thought about a passage I had just read from Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s memoir. She wrote about a time her family was in Greece, exploring a rickety boat wrecked on the seashore. She was carefully watching her kids when one of her kids slipped through the deck to the bottom of the hull. One instant he was there, and the next he was gone. He was okay – no permanent damage – but with the experience came her realization that you can’t physically protect your children from all the possible hurts in their lives, no matter how attentive or careful you are. You just can’t.

I remember having my own “boat” experience with Parker when he was maybe two years old. We were at a playground where he was climbing down some steps right in front of me when he slipped and hit is mouth on one of the edges of the equipment. I remember lunging for him and just missing the back of his shirt. His mouth bled profusely (he has the chipped tooth to show for it),  and it rattled me to the core. It still does when I think about it, which I believe is a natural reaction for every mom as we try to throw out our arms to shield our kids from whatever is heading their way.

But the reality remains that you can’t protect them from everything. I can’t be there on the playground to cover Madi’s ears if someone calls her a mean name. I can’t be there to put my hands over Parker’s heart to keep it from being broken someday. I can’t even protect them from falling at the roller skating rink.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s not always our job. Maybe they need to feel what it is like to fall down, to fail, to be hurt, so that they learn how to stand up, to try again, to protect others from getting hurt. I am still figuring out this transition from being their whole world to just a piece of it, and this is just one of the many hard parts of that transition. Becoming their support without being the scaffolding that obstructs their view. Being their cheering section without completing the task myself.

Madi fell a few times, even with my desperate attempt to prevent it. The first time she fell, she looked up at me with surprise, like she was thinking “why did you let that happen”?, but the second time it happened, she popped up and kept going…with hardly a backward glance. And that, I suppose, is the way it is supposed to be.