Not so fantastic....

....when you're called upon to collaborate in causing your child pain. Your almost-11-month old daughter can't understand why you're squeezing her, hugging her as tight as you can, all so that someone else can put a needle in her arm. Aren't hugs and squeezes meant to protect from pain? or, as a last resort, to force that unwelcome interloper away? "Because the doctor said so" and the trusty cliche "It's for your own good" -- I'm glad she can't understand such things yet, because even thinking of saying them clarifies for me just how hollow they must sound to a child who CAN understand. 'What could be better for me than NOT being hurt' is how I think I'd respond if told it was for my own good. 'And who is this Doctor you prate on about? She doesn't make my breakfast or my lunch or my supper. She doesn't change my diapers or read me stories. No, I think it's because YOU said so, because you're always going on and on about how great it is to do what you say.' And were she to say these things, my beautiful daughter, were she to listen to my empty rhetoric and say such things, she would be right. None of it could have happened without me. An accessory before, during and even after the fact. I am, in a single, heavy, suffocating word: guilty.

But maybe she does understand. If I've learned anything in my time as a father, it's that children often do understand more than we imagine. Not only that, they sometimes understand more, period. And if she does, this magical creature who lit upon our existence nearly a year ago and who has ever since made of our lives a fuller nest, if she closes her bright eyes to nap and in a moment of dream-towed insight understands why, I hope she forgives me.