Painful to Watch

It’s painful beyond words to witness your child’s pain. My daughter had some playground trauma in the first few weeks of fifth grade, and her nighttime tears and angst were gut-wrenching to witness. I struggled to listen, not to talk over her with advice and my own experiences. I also wrestled with how to help her, whom to tell and where to get good advice. The situation seems resolved, at least temporarily, through the efforts of my child herself, but the pain of those two weeks wrote indelibly on my psyche as well as the psyche of my ten-year-old girl.

I would not rob my children of all difficulties and painful experiences, but I am sorely tempted to sandpaper the rough edges. Standing by and loving them while they suffer, while not leaping in to save the day, may be the hardest thing I have ever done. Give me a problem to solve, a mountain to climb, miles to run, and I will tackle it gladly, but ask me to stand witness to pain, offer mute comfort, live patiently with an unresolved situation, and you ask me to walk through one of Dante’s infamous infernos. As I prayed over my daughter’s issue last week I thought of all that is to come, all that my parents had to witness: broken hearts, unrequited love, cliques and exclusion, rejection, failure. I remember my Dad’s stark words when I agonized over my infant daughter’s four months of bad colic: “it only gets harder from here.”

Despite those harsh (and true) words, I am blessed by the example of love and support that my parents offered to me and my four siblings. They did not solve our problems for us (with five kids there was no time for that!) but they always asked, listened, and cared. They hurt over our troubles even now. Though they have seven grandkids, we are still their babies. Even though I have entered my fifth decade, I continue to feel this love and support. In fact, one of my most vivid memories of Dad’s pain at my pain happened in the last ten years, at the birth of my now fifth-grade daughter.

I was lying in a hospital bed, wrung out and exhausted by the labor of giving birth to my daughter. My parents hovered in the doorway of the hospital room, torn between respecting my privacy and wanting to witness the miracle of the birth of their first grandchild. After my daughter was born, my nurse/midwife had trouble getting my bleeding to stop. Nurse Jan saw the blood and yelled for medication; there was none in the room. My father turned pale as Nurse Jan’s voice rose in repeated demands, and he dashed down the hall looking for someone to help. He did not know what medication to request, or even how to describe the situation. Someone asked him, “Is the baby OK?” and he said “No.” When he told me the story later (I was oblivious to it all at the time) he admitted that when the nurses asked about the baby he thought only of me – his baby. My baby was fine, but his was not.

I heard that story and wept. I wept from the hormones, from exhaustion, from the blessing of his great love for me, and from the new fount of love that erupted in my heart when my daughter was born. I wept also for the new possibilities of pain, the incipient terror at any danger or loss affecting my child. My life became doubly precious because she needed me, and her life was already a treasure beyond measure. We are all tangled up in the glorious mess of loving each other, and learning to accept life’s painful lessons for ourselves and our kiddos seems like a small price to pay.