My dear friend and fellow former English professor has corrected me on the compass poem. It was John Donne not Alexander Pope. Oh, dear, my brain is ossifying.
Yesterday we had our two year old grandson, as usual, and he was grand until our daughter came to pick him up. He had a sobbing, hysterical, heart-rending meltdown. It seemed to come out of nowhere, but I know better. The stress of so many schedule and childcare changes, unavoidable, have left him with a great, unnamed fear. She waited patiently until he calmed down, but the sobbing left my husband and I feeling blown away. Our grandson is overwhelmed, and struggling to rebalance himself. I have faith he can. He has a lot of love surrounding him, and he is intelligent and resourceful. We've watched our granddaughter struggle with her parents' divorce, her mom's cancer, and she is strong. But sometimes, you see the cracks. Kid's lives are not easy. They are swept by longing and unruly emotions and thoughts, and they haven't developed the skills to weather them. Witnessing all this again, as we did with our four kids, is just as disturbing as before. You want to protect them, but sometimes you can't. It's amazing, actually, how resilient we are.
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