As a parent of a 2 and 5 year old, I go through the entire gamut of emotions nearly every day.  Children have a way of affecting you like no other power on Earth, but I have to say that a couple of things really stand out.

The first – and most clearly the best – feeling a parent gets from their child is an enormous sense of pride and love as they learn and grow and accomplish things for the first time.  These highs are pure joy, even for little things like drawing a recognizable face – complete with almost-round head, 2 eye-like things in roughly the right place, and a line or oval-shaped thing for a mouth – for the very first time, to more technically accomplished things like riding a bike without training wheels.

The other feeling is the most incredible, deepest heartbreak that you’ve ever felt because your child is/has experienced pain or sadness or frustration in his or her life.  The feeling a parent gets is overwhelming when your child is him/herself in pain either physical or emotional.

Over the last several days, I’ve noticed a story that’s been unfolding with someone whom I really only know by face and name, though we share many of the same friends.  Ellen and Matt K. had to let go of their daughter Emma, and I can only barely imagine a fraction of their feelings right now.  As a parent I can almost feel by proxy the heartache, sadness, and rage, but also the deep calm of having their other daughter Ella by their side.

Sometimes it is hard to reflect on a day-to-day basis when you’re dealing with noodles on the floor, tomato sauce on the doorway trim, snot being licked off an upper lip (our daughter’s own,fortunately), or a particularly insistent need to have scrambled eggs for breakfast rather than cereal, that these little frustrations will pass and that there’s another opportunity for joy to be had right around the corner (if nothing else, the immense joy of watching your child sleep), all that on top of whatever highs and lows one might have had at work that day along with any personal stresses stringing you out.  It is all too easy to forget. 

But due to the loose fraternity and sorority that parents share as cohorts and commiserators, it is at these times that we are reminded harshly that all of these experiences are really joys in that we would not trade them in for the alternative.  So, my heart goes out to the Kowalczyk family in this time, and I know that we’ll all hold our kids a little tighter.