Y'all know those times when your kids do things that just totally blow you away? I'm not talking about leaving the milk out all morning or hitting a home run on the first at bat. I'm talking about those times when your kids say or do things that absolutely stop you in your tracks: when you overhear them pray at night or witness one of them stop and help someone who dropped her books or you stumble upon one of them reading to the other without being bribed. Y'all probably, like me, feel like those moments are sometimes few and far between. Well, not tonight.
Tonight was just an ordinary night-- until it wasn't. Tanner and I were headed to baseball practice, just the two of us, and without brothers in the car, he had me all to himself. "Hey Mom, what do you think would be the worst way to die?" Huh? Where did this come from, I wondered, but I pressed on, determined to give him a grown up answer. I pondered it all: car wreck, fire, drowning, sickness. "Well, I guess they would all be pretty bad ways to die. I don't know if one would be worse than the other." I wasn't sure if he didn't like my answer or if it satisfied him enough, but that was it-- end of that conversation, and we moved on to whether I thought he would get to pitch or not.
After a very long, almost excruciating, 90 minute practice that included fundamentals, drills, pop flies, and incessant "whoop, whoop's" from Tanner to his friends, we were back in the car. My middle child had gone from philosophy major to pre-teen goof ball in a two hour span, and he wasn't done yet. The question Tanner had originally posed to me about dying came back in the form of an answer. "Hey, Mom. You want me to tell you what the worst way to die would be?"
"You think you figured it out?"
"Yep. The worst way to die would be to die alone." Pause. Silence. I couldn't answer; and this mostly eloquent, English teacher mom managed to utter something quite un-eloquent like, "Uh-huh."
Nine and a half years ago, a very, very sick baby boy spent 17 weeks in the NICU, much of that time alone. And I wonder. . . does he remember? Is that where he got his answer? And if it is, what other answers does he have????
Oh, Tanner! You keep me on my toes.
