geez. What am I to think?

I got a phone call tonight from one of my wonderful PTA chairladies, Kim. "Hey J?" she asked. "Did you read the paper? Do you know the names of these kids?"

In our little local paper this weekend were a couple of stories I did indeed take note of, and no, I did not know the names of the kids. There was an 11 year old boy who had been "set on fire" by a 14 year old 'friend' due to a thrown cup of gasoline and a cigarette butt, and then a story of two 10 year old boys who had an accident on an ATV (or a motorcycle?) who were 1.5 miles from any adults, requiring the not-so-much-injured little boy to RUN for 1.5 miles to get help, with the other seriously injured boy later life-flighted to a nearby large hospital with "life-threatening injuries". My son heard the subsequent conversation I had with DH about the boy set on fire and let me know that he was, in fact, a friend of my son's. (I had NO IDEA. Apparently, Q said it was all the conversation amongst the 6th graders last week, but I hadn't heard). He got 3rd degree burns on his legs but is expected to return to school soon. No one knows yet about the second incident, but based on the location where it was reported to happen, it is most certainly a couple of 4th or 5th grade boys at our local elementary school. This comes just a few weeks after an accident where a 4th grade girl at our school BROKE HER BACK from an ATV accident. Good. God.

Kim made the comment to me, "You know what? There are are moms somewhere right now sitting at the bedside of these boys and these are THEIR SONS that we are talking about." I called my best resource for information, Paige, and she made the comment to me that, "You know what, J? Our boys are going to be in high school before we know it and we're going to start hearing about accidents even more often, when they start driving and start really being in the world."

Ya think I'm going to sleep very well tonight? Thanks, Paige! :-)

To experience life requires that you get right there into it. I totally buy the whole "sine function" argument that the magnitude of highs you experience requires that you that you are open to experience the same magnitude of lows. But isn't it a crapshoot whether you actually have to experience those ultimate lows? Ultimately, I don't know that I would be capable of surviving them. I think I would not be able to if they involved my children.

I am reminded again of that saying from Elizabeth Stone that someone shared with me when I first had children:
"Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."

Yes, Amen. That is SO what it is. The most precious and vital parts of myself do not belong to me anymore. The most important thing is not myself, anymore, and even more critical - I have very little (no) control over that "most important thing." It makes me feel joy like I've never felt and makes me see the world with new eyes. But for the flap of the wing of a butterfly, it is also what has the potential to drive me into the abyss of never ending despair.

oy. Parenthood.