spilled milk
My four-year-old’s super power is spilling milk. She spills milk like nobody’s business. Put a glass of milk anywhere on the table and she’ll spill it — always accidentally, never meaning to, somehow her hand or elbow or foot finds it and milk flies everywhere, and the dog leaps happily lappily into action, my wife and I mutter, and my daughter blushes and smirks.
When that happens now I get these flash forwards of her spilling drinks in various stages of her life: spilling beer on her friends at a sorority party, spilling coffee over the boardroom table at her first job, spilling champagne over herself at her wedding. Deep in my heart I know she’ll spill drinks like a champ all her life.
I have flash forwards of my son these days too. He is six and developing unfamiliar habits of caring what his hair looks like and having his heart broken and getting REALLY into football. He is a blossoming Seattle Seahawks fan, destined for heartbreak. He’s a sensitive guy. After the Seahawks lost a recent game, he brooded about it for a few hours before bursting into tears. ”Look at my face!” he shouted, as tears ran down through two small hawk faces we had painted on his cheeks at his request before the game. “LOOK AT MY FACE! I AM NEVER DOING THIS AGAIN!” He asked the next week for us to paint them again, before another loss. I can see his first breakup, his first rejection letter, his first dropped ball in the outfield. But he will bounce back, tougher.
They’re strange, these moments where the futures of your kids flash in front of you. You want everything to be safe and clean but it won’t be. Life is how you roll with it, and you do your best to help them roll well.
