independence, step #2

Other parents will get this:

You know how awestruck you are when your very own, tiny baby slides into the world, and she's so small and new, like a mere breath of innocence, a wee cocoon of a person ... you know how everything still feels wide-open and vulnerable when that little person has just barely started sitting up on her own, has just barely started eating anything beyond the finest puree, and as she pulls miniscule puffed cereal bits into her cheeks, you hover three inches away, believing, wildly and irrationally, that she might choke?

You know how that baby starts pulling up on stuff, and she's strangely (so strangely!) vertical for the first time, and she's really tippy, and she falls over and cries several times a day, so you bolt all the bookcases to the wall ... and then just when you catch your breath, she starts toddling, and falls down a lot, and you have to move all small objects up three feet, and you really just want to put her in a padded helmet for fear that she will gash her head open on some sharp corner, but a helmet would be, like, a socially problematic accessory?

And then you know how, when she runs for the first time on pavement, and you can just see the grinding, skin-peeling crash coming, and then it does, and there's the first bloody knee, and outwardly you kiss it and blow it off like it's no big deal, so that she doesn't smell fear and so she learns how to get through bits of pain, but on the inside you feel that scraped knee like a scrape on your heart?

And it goes like that, your breath slightly held, catching in your chest, watching your baby enter the world over and over again, and waiting for the inevitable hurts to catch onto her cuffs and tangle her feet, so you shield her from them as much as you can, until you think she's ready, or perhaps you're really waiting until you can bear it?

So this is why it's really weird when you suddenly realize that your kid (because she's a kid now, not so much a baby, even though she will always be your baby -- oh yes she will!) is pretty steady on her feet. And has been pretty steady for awhile now. And it might be OK to let her climb up on a stool, or something. So you hold your breath, and you banish visions of skulls cracked on tile floors, and you watch ...



And then you feel just a little bit ridiculous for perhaps holding her back all this time, and a little bit proud and embarrassingly amazed that she can stand at the sink and wash her own hands, ever-so-slightly tippy-toed in her bright orange, size 6 shoes.