What Is At Stake

I used to think of myself as fairly adventurous. I jumped out of an airplane once, launched myself over a waterfall or two in my kayak, climbed eleven pitches of a rocky cliff in Mexico. Doing those kinds of things made me feel alive. At the peak of that time in my life, risk had more to do with what I would lose by not taking chances than what I might stand to lose by taking them.

I measure risk differently now.

A couple of weeks ago there was a memorial service for a young woman in a nearby town who was murdered by someone who plowed her driveway in the winter. The details of what happened to her are horrific, and yet what upsets me the most is that her two-year old son was in his car seat when she was pulled out of the car. Hours later, he was found by a friend who went looking for the mom. The little boy had been there in the dark by himself. He had cried himself to sleep.  The car was still running, and his mother was long gone.

My calculus of risk used to be fairly simple. I used the life is short method and usually went for it, whatever it was. Now it is more complicated. Now it involves a need, a physical need, to protect my kid. The thoughts of what could happen to me don't bother me so much. The thoughts of what could happen to Quinn are what keep me awake at night. No adventure that involves the real possibility of risk seems worth it to me anymore…or at least that's true for right now. Nothing seems worth it because it is life with Quinn, and life with Quinn is inevitably going to be even shorter than just plain life would have been.

And this way of thinking feels risky in and of itself. I want Quinn to know the best me, and my sense of who the best me is, is the one who hucked herself out of an airplane. At the same time, I don't want to miss a day in her life. I want to be within earshot when she calls out for her mama. To do this involves not taking risks. And herein lies the problem: I can't have it both ways.

Nineteen months into this project, I'm still trying to figure out who I am…whom I'm going to be. There are plenty of days when I miss my old life. And even though the mornings can be excruciating, and the temper tantrums embarrassing, and the sacrifice of self some days seems too much for this small family to ask of me, the fact is that the thing I care most about is being there when she needs me…or even just in case.