Thanks, and I’ve relaxed

The day after I wrote that last post, freaking out over somewhat silly things, an 8-year-old boy was killed by a bomb during the Boston marathon. There’s nothing like that to put worries into perspective. Every parent worries – for life – and while we all have the same big worries in common (kidnapping, drugs, bullying, harm, etc), the tiny concerns can set us apart.

As you can tell from my last post, I am concerned about what is happening to the food we eat. In short, I don’t trust it. I worry about the abundance of chemicals we so freely fill our days with and what they are doing to our bodies and environment. But that’s a post for another time.

Today, I want to share two things. First, what you have all obviously been waiting for – did Adeline (and I) survive her first field trip? Yes! Turns out, not surprisingly, I had nothing to worry about. She sat with a little boy named Grady, and I guess they were giggling while on the bus and watching Rumplestiltskin and his gold-spinning ways quite contentedly. As for me, as soon as I vented my concerns here, I felt a million times better, as is so often the case. As for the reasoning behind no seat belts on school buses, there are good reasons! Read them here, if you would like.

The other thing I want to share is an all-time favorite poem that I’m sure many of you have read before. It always quiets my fears regarding my children and makes me remember that their lives are not mine to control. They are theirs to discover.

Children by Khalil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

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• For the biggest mother of them all →