What Kids Can Do

Therapy this morning. My regular therapist was out because there was a Swine Flu scare at her daycare which caused her to have to go take her preschool daughter to get tested for exposure to the virus.

I keep thinking about how scary it must be to have a little one sometimes. There are diseases like Swine Flu and that virus that is apparently everywhere and can kill kids (one of my friend's children had it and survived, but it was scary), there are the unexpected biological twists like extreme asthma, life-threatening allergies, and seizures (again, I have friends dealing with all these issues), and then there are the everyday things like the broken arms, fevers, runny noses, and the never-ending injuries children do themselves and others. It's terrifying.

Fortunately, and this is just based on observation, it seems that children are remarkably resilient. I know once I saw one literally run face-first into a brick wall, fall down, sit up, and then run off after his friends again a few moments later. (Of course, he was always something of a special case....legendary, really....) I don't know if I'll ever have one of my own, don't know if I'll ever come any closer than this surreptitious watching of my friend's children out of the corners of my eyes, but children will never cease to amaze me with what they can take in stride, what they can recover from. I guess this is one of God's graces to us when we're too small to take good care of ourselves. He gave us the boldness to explore the world so we can learn and a body that can then rebuild itself when those lessons are hard ones.

I hope my therapist's daughter is okay. I don't want to think about any child having to be seriously ill; having been that perennially-sick child hooked up to machines, poked, prodded, and operated on long ago myself, I hate the thought of any child in a hospital room.