A Dose of Reality

How does it know if you're a child?

As competitive as I am, I had to concede the other guy had the winner on this one, the cutest question ever asked by a child. His son, about six at the time, had needed help opening a child resistant medicine bottle. He had struggled for several minutes, only to watch dad remove the top with barely a flick of his wrist.

"How does it know if you're a child?" he had asked. How indeed.

A few weeks ago, my daughter rescued a lost dog. At least she thought she did, until she realized the dog she was coaxing into her car actually lived a few houses down. Not lost, not yet. The other day, I rescued a lost child. At least I thought I did, until I realized the child's mom was in the playground and had just stopped paying attention for a second. The boy, no more than two, was on the move, racing -- as only a toddler can -- down the bike path to check things out elsewhere in the park. I followed him at a safe distance, not wanting to scare him. A woman walking toward us smiled, and I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking the boy belonged to her. She remarked on his determination, was smiling about the I've got places to go, people to see look on his face.

"So he's not yours?" I asked. As it turns out, she thought he was mine. It was only then that a girl came running up behind me, breathless, to retrieve her brother. Like the dog, he was not lost at all. Not yet. He was just out for a stroll. I trembled to think about what might have happened had mom not noticed when she did that the boy had wandered a bit. About what might have happened had she not noticed and had there not been other folks in the park who did.

I told my daughter the story. She was horrified. A few days shy of her seventeenth birthday, she told me she cannot imagine ever taking her eyes off her children for a second. Already, she senses the enormity of the responsibility of motherhood, and I am glad she does. One day, this girl who congratulates herself on letting the dog out but sometimes can't remember to let him in will be as vigilant as anyone in looking after her babies. I smiled, reminding her how her siblings used to tease me all the time when I would lose sight of her for a second and panic. My head would whip around, my voice would become suddenly shrill. "Where's Nicki?" I would yell. She was usually right there, out of sight only because she was short and a bit on the quiet side.

She assured me, when I reminded her of this, that she never would have wandered off. She was way too cautious. I thought about the little boy, who probably had no intention of wandering too far off from mom. My daughter was obviously having similar thoughts. She acknowledged that she might have been a little spacey at times, maybe wandered off without even realizing it. Not spacey I thought. Just a child. Isn't she still?

How am I supposed to know? She's still spacey sometimes, always will be I imagine. So am I. But I cannot remember the last time I felt that sick feeling, that sudden panic that goes hand in hand with the occasional lapse in mommy radar that compels us to keep our kids where they should be, whatever that means. I'm not sure when the panic ended, when I somehow knew it was okay to let my guard down, if only for a few moments. It's like the age old thermos conundrum: how do it know?  How does it know whether it's supposed to be keeping the liquid hot or cold. I suppose, like the rest of us mortals, it just operates on instinct, keeping things where they should be. As long as it's able. I would imagine even a thermos has its limits.

She's almost seventeen, and I still feel compelled to protect her. To keep her warm, or cool, or just close. I wish I were as wise as that medicine bottle, that stubborn plastic container that somehow knows when to gather all its molecules together and grip onto the cap for dear life. The inanimate thing that somehow knows, better than the rest of us do, it seems, when to let go.