The long walk

When L. was in his last year of preschool a mom I kind-of sort-of knew through another mom of a child in the class (are you following this?) spent weeks being stressed out because her daughter was going to be sedated to have some extensive dental work done. I remember thinking, dental work? At four? And I also remember thinking--and I'm a little ashamed of this--that the mother was making an awful big deal out of some dental work. After all, only months before I had shuffled down a long, lonely hallway, wearing cloth booties over my sandals, and a mask and gown, holding baby T. in my arms. She was dressed in a ridiculously large baby hospital gown decorated with lions and elephants and at the end of the hallway was a cold, terrible room--the OR. And if the walk to the OR had been long and terrible, the walk back with empty arms had been ten times worse. When I listened to that mom go round and round with her worries I couldn't help but think, here was this mom worried about dental work and my daughter's head was still held together with dissolvable screws and bolts? I'd like to think I wasn't snippy and mean-spirited in my thoughts and I really don't think I was. I think I just felt sorry for myself at that point, still so worried about our daughter, and her recovery; still trying to get our feet on the ground after it had shifted so enormously out from under us. I have really understood since then that for every hardship you endure as a parent, there are others out there enduring worse; for every sleepless night, others facing an eternity of sleepless, empty nights. Every parent worries about their child, and no worries are petty, or unworthy, or less than the worries of others because they are your worries, and they are about your child--your flesh-and-blood, your center of your universe, your sun in the morning and stars at night, your be-all-end-all, and it's all scary, and worrisome, and that pit in your stomach is real and universal, for all parents everywhere. And of course, here we are, almost five years later, and this morning T. will be sedated and have five cavities fixed (five?!). It's just dental work, that's all. It's just a few hours out of the morning and all will be well. But still, to me, it feels an awful lot like that walk again; only this time my baby is five, and I know now so much more than I knew then about just how much she means to us.