I'm sorry, I'm sorry, little bit afraid

Driving Munchkin home from daycare yesterday afternoon, I wove carefully around the potholes while trying to decipher the stories she was desperate to tell me. One was about a dog--that much I could figure out, having been helped by the notes in her daily log that explained one of the staff had brought in a dog for show-and-tell. Munchkin was explaining, from the back seat: "Mom! A Willow in a-circle time! Little bit afraid, little bit afraid. Crying! Willow woof-woof, gentle gentle, be gentle, little bit afraid."

Willow is the name of a dog owned by one of Munchkin's cousins. The daycare dog, by contrast, was named Bailey. Close enough. There was a dog, Munchkin was a little nervous, and then some stock phrases about being gentle to animals, and what does the dog say? Okay. I think I understand.

Then her next tale. It goes like this: "Mom! I'm sorry .... I'm sorry ... I'm sorry. Evie! I'm sorry Evie! Crying. Fall down a-outside. Gentle gentle, no pushing! [Munchkin] fall down, [Munchkin] a-owie. Crying. I'm sorry ... I'm sorry ... [Munchkin!] No pushing in a-snow."

I couldn't, ultimately, figure out who pushed whom. All that was clear was that the incident of the pushing and the apology and the hurt had made really struck Munchkin, had impressed on her that actions have consequences, and that these can be painful. Apologies can soothe, but the pain is real, the offense hurtful and the regret lingering. She continued apologizing and admonishing, whimpering and forgiving, over and over.

I tried to reassure her, but her impression was, after all, true: sorry is good, but sorry doesn't erase what happened, and sometimes, you feel lousy even after your head-bump doesn't hurt any more.

My eyes were misting up, though, not necessarily because my daughter is learning this hard lesson of, well, being human, but mostly because something terrible has happened: one of the babies in the infant room has lost her father this weekend. Baby I-- is a couple of months younger than Munchkin, and they were in the infant room together all fall. I--'s mom is very young, a student. I know what that's like, and I always make a point of saying hello and admiring I-- (who really is adorable, and adored) but she consistently looks right through me. If she's like me and my sister at that age, she probably figures she has so little in common with bourgeois old old married and settled me that I'm an alien to her. Fair enough.

I--'s mom and dad were no longer a couple, and while I am not privy to the details of their lives, the newspaper reports that he spent weekends with his daughter, and ran a photo of them together. He was young, too. A student. Out with friends this weekend at a local bar, he made a dumb mistake on the way home, misjudging the drop from a retaining wall on an impromptu shortcut. His body was found the next day in the local river, where he had fallen to his death.

I'm struck by the tragedy of it, all round. What a dumb way to die, a silly accident, preventable but with a consequence way out of proportion to the miscalculation. The kind of thing that might happen, really, to anyone, but maybe especially to someone young, someone so full of life as to attempt a midnight river-crossing to shave some time off a long cold walk home from a night of fun. What a tragedy to his daughter, whom he loved, and to his daughter's mother, who kept the family functioning, was working out the dynamic of the present to create a future.

There is a collection at daycare, pooled funds for a contribution to a trust fund for Baby I-- that has been set up by her father's grieving friends. I can't imagine how they must be feeling.

In the car, listening to Munchkin work through her fears and her regrets, trying to make sense of her experience to ease her own hurts and anxieties, I realize this is a process that never ends, that we all struggle with all our lives. Once home, I held her close to me, sniffed the strawberry scent of her hair and rubbed her round round belly, as if I could keep everyone near me safe.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Little bit afraid. Crying.