Nothing I can do
Banana and I have been arguing, lately. I like to think it is a quickly passing phase, like her brief obsession with all things Princess Barbie, but I am deluding myself. She is a teen-ager and I might as well suck it up and wait until she grows up before I can like her again. (I love her – she is my child – and I will do anything and everything to help her grow into a lovely, responsible, capable adult. But until that day comes, I don’t have to like her.)On the way into town this morning, running late, as usual, we were purposefully not talking to each other. There was a bathroom incident involving an antique hand mirror and a cheap hairdryer that I do not want to discuss, even with you.
So it was a quiet ride in to town. On the way, there is a ‘C’ shaped curve in the road that skirts the edge of the local airport. As we approached the curve, I could see something tan lying on the side of the road. At first glance – and from a distance – it looked like a portion of a hay bale had fallen off a truck. Or a heap of gravel that did not get bladed smooth.
As we approached, something white flashed – and I knew instantly it was a white-tailed deer. Banana leaned forward against her seatbelt.
“Mom! What is tha---ooooooohhh nooooo.”
As we followed the road around the curve where the deer lay, she raised her head and flipped her tail. The gravel was blood red in front of her body, her front legs crumpled underneath her.
“Mom! Stop! We have to help her!”
“Sweetheart, there is nothing I can do for her. She is dying.”
“But Mom...”
She looked over at me and our eyes locked. I looked away first. There was a disappointment there that I could not bear to see.
There is nothing I can do.
Not for that dying deer.
And not for my daughter in this stage of her life. I have to hide my eyes behind my sunglasses, and smile, and trust that everything I have done up to this point in my child’s life will guide her toward her potential, toward her destiny, toward her place in this world. And trust that someday she will see me without that look of disappointment in her eyes.
I hope that when my daughter is grown, she will stop the truck and try to help that dying deer.
I hope she has the skills, the strength, the capabilities to do all the things I can never do.
2 Comments:
This post is incredibly profound. It sums up a lot of the conflicting feelings I have about my own parenting skills and relationships with my children. I hope you won't mind me linking to it on my own blog.
Ray: Thank you for the compliment. And I don't mind if you link to the post...at all. Link away.
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