Light Socket

I'm making dinner, rushing to finish before my trainer and friends arrive for our Monday evening workout session. The girls are playing contentedly with play dough and rolling pins.

It's easy to mistake pre-school savvy with worldly knowledge.

Without warning, Tristyn stands beside me earnestly pushing a screwdriver (recently used for changing batteries in their cherished Zhu Zhu pets) into the electrical socket that is eye level to her.

"OH NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO!", I shout and grab the screwdriver from her eager hand.

She crumbles into tears as I kneel down to hug her tight. It is one of those moments in motherhood where my heart feels as though it's being squeezed and I just want time to stop while I embrace the precious life in her small body.

Cause and effect is a complicated subject to explain to a 3-year old as her twin scolds me, "Don't yell at my sister, mama!"

I flash back to my childhood - I am 7 years old and my brother, Che', and I are arguing about standing atop 2 flat steel posts sticking out of the ground (oh what a different world we lived in 30 years ago). Impatient for my turn, I push his legs out from underneath him. He crashes down onto the sharp steel projections which puncture his back, nearly collapsing his lung.

Today, the scar that blemishes his perfect olive skin below his shoulder blade still brings me shame.  

But my mom tells me she did not scold me. She knew as my mother what I didn't even know myself; I had learned my lesson without anyone even telling me.

My husband, in all his fatherly wisdom, echos that sentiment when I relay the incident to him. He lovingly tells Tristyn, "We learn from our mistakes".

Che' and I with our wise mama