Day 181

This post is a day late. I had every intention of writing it last night, but I got sucked into to the live hearing on the January 6, 2021 Capital insurrection.  By the time it was over I was too amped up to sit down and write about anything other than going off on 45 and his enablers...

Two things about yesterday that bear mentioning. The first was a conversation that I overheard while at lunch. Three guys in a table close to mine were talking about their kids. Two of the guys were late 30s / early 40s. The third guy was older and mostly silent. One of the guys said that his biggest fear was something about having to deal with his daughter's boyfriends in another few years. The daughter is still young - under 10, if I heard it correctly. I didn't say anything but this thought went through my head: "Buddy, there are things way scarier than your kid bringing home their boyfriend or girlfriend for the first time." Thinking about it more after I left the restaurant, I came to conclusion that while we all know that death is inevitable we are unable as parents to project that eventually onto our children, at least not in terms of sequencing their demise prior to our own. Some of us may, from time to time, think about it for an instant but then instinctively push the thought away with force. What is even more rare is to give voice to the thought when talking to another adult. I think it all boils down to an innate sense that to even consider the possibility that something bad can or will happen to our children is tempting fate. Or, it is such the nightmare scenario that our brain shuts it down in a "flight" response to perceived danger albeit one that is theoretical in nature. The bottom line is that we can't imagine it so we don't consider it or talk about it. It is this unspoken dread that parents truly fear the most regardless of whether they want to acknowledge it... 

The other thing about yesterday happened while I was walking into my dentist's office. Adjacent to the office is a preschool / daycare facility. Just as I was about to walk through the door of the office, I heard peals of laughter coming from the playground. When I turned to look, I couldn't see any children but I could see hoses and fountains of water on the playground. The kids were being treated to some wet fun running through sprinklers or chasing each other with buckets of water. This hit me pretty hard as it reminded me of the end of the school year when Damian was in elementary school. McGinnis Woods would always hold a water day where kids, teachers and willing parents got to run about the playground and hose each other down with water toys. Of course Damian loved this day. I loved it, too and would usually get wet along with everyone else. Hearing the sounds of the kids having fun on the playground brought me right back to these happier times. It was a bit of a shock to the system which left me in a bit of funk for the next couple of hours. 

These are the kinds of unexpected encounters and reactions that Dawn and I have to deal with now. It's difficult to predict how, when, or in what form the triggers will come. Equally difficult to predict is how I will react or respond when they do. As I did in the beginning, I try to remind myself to breath. It helps but doesn't negate the impact. It just lessens it.