One of the most difficult things about raising children is to watch them confront the world’s harshness for the first time. My two little ones have thus far been privileged and blessed to allow this to happen slowly and gently—at the death of a dear friend’s elderly father, with conversations about homelessness or petro-chemicals or greed, and, yesterday, with a first trip to the Emergency Room. Without getting into too many details, my sweet four-year-old spent most of last Saturday under the florescent lights of Children’s Hospital, being poked and prodded while watching ungodly amounts of cartoon television and negotiating IV-for-ice-cream trades. We came away from the day with an unsettling, but temporary diagnosis, feeling 90 percent grateful and 10 percent, well, exposed.MORE »
