Handsprings

Today I watched my daughter flip through the air. I saw her spread her wings and try to fly. Someone spotted her, of course, but she tossed herself backward as if she has known how to do a back handspring since birth. She trusted the spotter. And indeed the spotter helped her over every time. My daughter doesn't have the technique down yet, but she understands the trust part and the try part, and she clearly believes that she and everyone else in her class can do these feats of physical daring by showing up and trying again and again. I also saw her try to ride a unicycle. She cannot ride her bicycle without training wheels yet, but there she stood by the wall climbing onto that tiny unicycle again and again and again. She reminded me of an ant carrying some object twice its size over a stair step sixty times its size. There is no impossible. There is no nonsequitor.

I have much to learn of faith from her.

Before heading down to the school to watch, I had to call Chidlrens Hospital to make the CT Scan appointment for next week. The scheduler asked a lot of questions and gave a lot of information. My child can't eat less than six hours before the test. She has to show up in the morning for part one of the process and come back in the afternoon for the actual scan... The image of my child lying on a gurney unconscious haunts me. When it first formed in my mind, it sucked the breath out of me. My lungs shriveled flat on the nothingness of mother fear.

I had to see her fly through the air and land on her feet. I had to see her strength and determination. I had to see her vitality.

She is alive, and we are alive, and we will probably all live long, healthy lives. The CT Scan is to rule out unmentionable possibilities that statistics say are not likely. But it is still there like those ghost clouds in yesterday's storm. And when the test comes and goes, I'll go back down to the school and watch her fly through the air again and again and again.