Dave’s parents have a shaky, scratchy old taped-to-VHS home movie of him as a toddler, bumbling across a rolling lawn in polyester pants. in it, he does an uncanny impersonation of a round, giggling, bouncing, silly-putty drunkard - up, and down, and wheeee! up, and down, and hahahaha!

then he bangs his head smack into a concrete step.

and gets up and laughs into the camera, tears streaming from his eyes.

Oscar apparently inherited more than prehensile toes and those blue, upslanted, smiling eyes from daddy. now that he’s walking, he too is a wild, silly-putty-esque rover, toddling and tumbling headlong into as much of the world as he can get his eager, grubby little hands on, squealing with glee. he’s down as much as he’s up, and he’s had a recurring black eye now for over a month, but he will not be held back. there is too much out there to be explored, tasted, giggled at. he totters across our lawn on chubby legs, arms waving like a football fan, laughing at the way the grass tickles. he is wonder incarnate…intoxicated by movement, by living. he is beautiful.

and he scares the living shit out of me.

this month, in Achtung Baby, Her Bad Mother wrote about the bittersweet ache of this path of discovery and exhilaration that our children are on, about the thrill and the terror of watching them take flight, knowing - as they do not - that they are fragile, mortal…that they cannot fly. and yet knowing, remembering, with an act of courage adults are not always willing to engage in, how important it can be to believe that one can.

i had almost forgotten what it felt like to be small, and dangerous, and immortal, until i read her post…and then it came flooding back, all the power of fearlessness…all the joy.

“I know that beneath her wings there is flesh and bone and blood; I know that no matter how immortal she seems or feels, no matter how removed from the exigencies of time and space is her experience of life, no matter how freely she flies… I know that she is as bound to earth and body as am I.

But I also know this: that being bound and feeling bound are two very, very different things, and that once upon a time, a long time ago, I felt unbound. I flew. And the memories of this flight are among the sweetest that I carry.

So. I want for her to fly, as much as she can, while she still believes that she has wings. I want her to be dangerous, to tilt into the wind, to aim at the sun. I want her childhood to filled with speed and light and the delicious tang of fear.”

unbound. i had almost forgotten.

but i can see it, the seeds of it, in Oscar’s freewheeling curiosity, his blithe exuberance. i want to pin my own fearful hands to my sides when they reach out to hold him back, stifle my voice in my throat as it calls out “danger! danger!” achtung, baby, indeed. my hands will catch. my voice will comfort. but i do not want them to take from him the wonder of the world. i want him to feel unbound, for as long as he can…and unbound by my fears for him, most of all.

for reminding me, i want to award Bad a most grateful A Perfect Post – May 2007 for May. Bad is good. and has a heart that soars, and the courage to let her daughter have one too. you heard it here.

to check out the other Perfect Posts for this past month, visit Petroville and Suburban Turmoil and see who else is out there making us remember what we’re doing and what a darn good time we’re having in the process. :)