How Baby

One of the hardest things about being a parent at this stage of life is watching your child go through million tiny heartbreaks of growing up. The road to becoming an adult is a minefield of them. Some of them, I remember from my own teenage years; some, I’m proud and relieved to watch her sidestep. And some, they discover newly all on their own.

I won’t go into the exact thing that prompted this comic, for Momo’s privacy. But it was rough, emotionally, because as much as I have tried to prepare her for this, and prepare myself to experience it again, the blow still hurts when it lands. It reminds me how heavy the burden of my experiences is, how tiring it is to carry around anxieties and pains for decades. I can show her how to carry them more comfortably, but I can’t take them away from her any more — they’re an important part of the person she’s growing up to be, just like mine.

There’s some healing in it. A chance to give counsel: not only to her, but to the sad child in me as well. We see the world again through the eyes of our children… not just the wonder and the excitement, but the bad things too. And maybe they feel just a little lighter, for being set down for a moment and looked at closely so they can be understood, broken apart and used to teach.