“Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.” – Charles Dickens

We’ve had a seemingly unending string of clear, sunny days here in Seattle so I trundled my kids off to the park yesterday morning. My toddler was on his strider bike, my 1^st grader on her bike and I was pushing the stroller in case of any breakdowns, mechanical or otherwise. Because my son is new at the strider bike it took us so long to make it to the park four blocks away that the first thing we did when we arrived is to have snacks. We found a perfectly shady bench on this perfectly sunny morning and I started to unzip the cooler bag. My daughter, wanting to be the first to crack open the bread sticks with cheese dip, pushed off to run around the bikes, slipped and fell, crying out as she hit the ground.

I wasn’t very sympathetic. The thoughts that crossed my mind were that she was being careless and greedy to have the first go at the snacks and this might have been the fourth fall already on a Monday morning, fortunately none of them serious enough to even warrant a mark. But I knew that adding hurt feelings to a hurt knee wasn’t going to help so I didn’t say anything and bundled her up and gave it a kiss.

That’s when the grace of the moment dropped in. I had a split second of understanding that the cry and the wanting to be first was not really from the fall but from holding it together as her brother celebrated his second birthday and got all the presents. And that my reaction was from being tired from hosting the second birthday party the night before so that my impatience and judgment were the side effects of pretending that I wasn’t.

I have no idea why humans are such complicated creatures so that what seems to be happening rarely is. But I suspect it is so that we are lured to look deeper. It brings to mind the Buddhist tonglen meditation where you breathe in the pain of those around you and breathe out relief. I find that even when I don’t yet know the true cry of the hurt, it still works. I’m starting to think that maybe that’s why mamas have kissed skinned knees for generations upon generations – so they have a moment to breathe out relief and keep their mouths shut. I found that it works because things are as rarely as perfectly sunny as they seem.