Wordspinning

Failure to Fly

I heard this term for the first time this past weekend used to refer to a child who falls from several stories and survives. Falls that would typically be fatal to an adult. A family friend had a son who dropped to concrete from two stories. He spent a week in a body cast and suffered no lasting damage.

Failure to fly.

My brother is faced with the death of a friend from high school. She suffered from a rare and severe form of post-partum depression. It claimed the life of her baby before it also took her life.

Failure to be faster than a speeding bullet.

When my husband worked at the gas station in downtown Wayzata near the railroad tracks, a man stumbled in late at night mumbling over and over again, "You hear the trains when they come by..." His fiance had been walking with him along the tracks. They didn't hear the train. It swept her under its metal wheels, his arms unable to hold her.

Failure to be more powerful than a locomotive.

I remember that I cannot do everything all the time. That doing some small things is still okay. If I can't finish all the laundry I can still wash a load or two. Small steps still get you somewhere.

I can't always attend to my children, connect meaningfully with my spouse, and clean the whole house and prep for work and sew and knit and exercise and cook flawlessly, diligently, without fail.

Still I can be. And some days that is enough.

Failure to be supermom.

posted by Kiara at 2:40 PM