Usually I arrive here to write and share things that might help. I mean, my hope as a mom and pediatrician is to elevate research, share vulnerability, toss out the irony in the isolation of ideas trapped in an ivory tower and bring in hope for more understanding. I’m usually here to share because I believe if we swap ideas through narrative we all move towards calm and confidence or knowledge and skill as parents, caregivers, adults, children, and partners.
But today I’m just here at my kitchen counter wanting to share an incredible image. Just wanting to make sure you’ve beheld it, too. I haven’t read a single word about the image and I will keep it that way. I don’t want others’ ideas or personal narratives or their agendas to taint what I see. And my hope here is to do the same for you.
All I can say is that for me the image is a triumphant, loud reminder of the immense privilege, the singular honor, and the wired intuition we hold when we get to parent a child. I mean life happens. In all its messy truths and horrific pains, mistakes and brilliant saves, and in our jubilant discoveries and the small gifts given every…single…day. But there was moment this past Saturday, captured by a lens, that explains so much about what and how we fear, what comes flying at all of us on Planet Earth, and what we can truly handle.
Enjoy this photo worthy of a long stare. I get lost in it.
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leid Jenkinson says
A long log stare. Every time i look away and then look again, i see something else. Seems like every conceivable reaction, and some extremely fast reactions by other than the father. But one, possibly two persons, tried to stop that bat – and one succeeded from an awkward positions, too. There is just so much in that photo. It reminds me of my mother – in the days before seat belts (about 62 years ago) – when that arm came out of nowhere as she made an emergency stop in the family car. I think i was maybe 9.