In the weeks after Ruby was born I would look at other parents with their toddlers and be in awe of the fact that they hadn't done anything wrong--the kid looked healthy. The first time Ruby was a little sick (I think it was a cold, and back then I thought I would never ever forget that day, but see, I have) I was totally freaked out. My decisions about how to take care of that cold felt like the biggest and scariest decisions I'd ever faced.

While I am a tad calmer--just a tad mind you--about Ruby's occasional fevers or colds (because besides that one pesky stomach bug just before she turned two Ruby is barely ever seriously sick), it is still incredibly hard for me not to worry and fret and feel stressed out for the duration of the illness. I watch her like a hawk, I give her a ton of homeopathic stuff that surely does help, but really helps me more and I worry. Did I say I worry?

I worry too if David gets sick. Last year my dad was sick with some unknown ailment for the longest time and until they figured it out, I was worried. But it's not the same. Because David and my dad and everyone else who I love can take responsibility for their own care. They'll seek help from the medical establishment, from other loved ones, and they'll ultimately make their own decisions about what that care needs to be.

They say the love for a child is special. It is. But it's also a burden. A burden to be responsible, for the next so-many years, for her body, her entire little being.

Sure Ruby knows when she needs a "pollipop" and she takes full responsibility for that need. She already knows how to do that and she trusts her need and want and will express it happily, grumpily, forcefully and delightfully (so soon, my babe, you are growing up so fast). And I have already seeded and will nurture carefully her sense of responsibility for anything and everything that has to do with her, but the bottom line is that when she's sick she'll expect and need me to take care of her. And I'll do it, of course I'll do it, I'll even do it well because I trust myself, but it's probably the scariest part of what I know is to come in this journey that is called parenthood.

PS. Why am I writing this now? Ruby is fine and snoring her way through another happy night. But we're in the midst of a crazy collective panic about the flu. I've been reading up on it (I'll find some good links in a sec to share: this blog and this post are excellent) and that's allowed me to keep my own feelings and opinions on this media-craze in perspective. So I rationalize. Could someone please pass that post-it note on to my heart and my emotional-self, because they clearly didn't get the message from my brain labeled "it's okay, no need to worry."