I'm Lindsay Ferrier, a Nashville writer with a passion for family travel, exploring Tennessee, and raising kids without losing my mind in the process. This is where I share my discoveries, along with occasional deep thoughts, pop culture tangents and a sprinkling of snark. Want to get in touch? Use the CONTACT form at the top of the page.
June 30, 2010
>Back in 2002, Kendall was the most darling three-year-old girl with white-blond hair, sparkling blue eyes, and a plucky personality. She was the daughter of my husband’s best friend, and we loved seeing her and hearing stories from her parents of all the funny things she’d do and say.
At my engagement party that year, Kendall found me outside, slipped her hand into mine, and led me down to a small creek at the bottom of the yard, where a few ducks were paddling around in the shallow water. There, she told me a very solemn story she’d created about those ducks and what they did and where they lived. I hoped then that I’d have a child as adorable as Kendall. By the time the party ended, she had curled herself into a tiny ball atop a back deck bar chair and very sweetly fallen fast asleep.
A couple of weeks later, my husband and I were rushing to a hospital emergency room. Kendall had drowned in a neighbor’s backyard swimming pool.
It never should have happened, of course. She had been playing with her older sister and several other older kids inside the house while her mother and a friend were outside. It was out of character for Kendall to leave the group of children and strike off on her own. It was out of character for her to slip unseen and unheard into a swimming pool, all by herself.
But Kendall was three. And from that moment on, before I had even had children of my own, I realized that “out of character” doesn’t really apply to three-year-olds. I realized that I couldn’t use a three-year-old’s past behavior to determine what she would and wouldn’t do in the future, and whether she would be safe.
And while Kendall’s death was eight years ago, now that my son is three, her memory is constantly with me– because Bruiser is now right on the cusp of being able to do so much more. He’s starting to making decisions like a normal little person, and I find myself relying on him to play in the backyard like I’ve told him when he’s out with neighbors, rather than open the gate and head for god knows where. I trust him to play downstairs while I take a quick shower, and to stay out of trouble. I trust him to stay with his sister when she goes next door to see if her neighbor friend can play.
But Kendall reminds me over and over again that even though he’s starting to seem rational, and even though he behaves rationally 90% of the time…
He’s only three.
The other day, he demanded that I go outside and get a Silly Band he’d left in the car. I was in the middle of cooking dinner and refused. A minute later, I heard the front door open and shut. I ran to the front of the house and saw him resolutely walking down our front steps and heading for the car himself.
A couple of weeks ago, I was casually watching the kids play in the backyard from the kitchen when I noticed Bruiser was out of sight. I went outside– he was gone. I ran around the house and he was at the end of the neighbor’s driveway. In fairness, he’d seen an adult neighbor on the street playing with his kids, so I know that in his mind, it was okay because an adult he knew was there, but…
He’s three.
It’s a difficult year no matter the child, and I remember breathing a huge sigh of relief on the day Punky turned four. Because in the back of my mind, I’m always thinking that if my friends could lose their little three-year-old spark in one unimaginably painful instant,
so could I.
And so the invisible cord tethering my son to me is a very, very short one right now, and when I seem to other parents to be overprotective of him and overly worried, I wish I could tell them the story I’ve just told you. Watch your dearest friends lose their child in an accident and you’ll do anything, anything to keep the same thing from happening again.
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