the heartache of parenting

My daughter was three when I momentarily lost her at the Bronx Zoo. Maybe a total of two minutes passed between noticing she was gone and finding her with the llamas, but those two minutes were filled with terror. A microcosm of that terror lives inside all parents at all times, from the time your child is born until, well, forever.

The worries start when you find out you are expecting a child and they don’t let up. Childbirth, SIDS, things that loom large in the beginning are all expected worries, but there are so many other things that rest just below the surface and sometimes rise to the top at 3am when you feel most hopeless to do anything about them.

And mostly, there’s nothing you can do. You can strap them into car seats and make sure they take their vitamins and get their vaccinations. You can teach them to look both ways before they cross the street and buy them a car with safety features, but that doesn’t stop the worry. It doesn’t stop you from thinking every time they go out — are they safe? It doesn’t stop you from having pangs of fear when they walk to school for the first time, when they start driving, when they are simply off with their friends. You worry about school shootings, kidnappings, tick bites, whatever contagion is going around.

You hear and read stories about other kids. Kids who went out for a bike ride and never came back. Kids who died from the flu. Tragic car accidents. Cancer. A young girl with a bright future dead in a helicopter crash. You think about these kids and then you…