How to Get Over a Shitty Childhood

and other confusions.

Last Friday I ran up a hiking trail with the twins and watched them run down it. They’re three years old. Some people call three year-olds threenagers, and I’m one of them. Once we were at the bottom of the hill one of them suggested, his face wide and smiling, that we run up again simply to run down again, so we did. We hiked to a boardwalk through a wetland where mallards were dunking themselves underwater in search of slimy food, and when the ducks refused to swim under the boardwalk, one of the boys threw himself down onto the wooden slats and screamed in frustration. I am deeply familiar with the rigid line of his little body as his emotions, not yet given words, pulse through him, and I hold him to keep him safe. My job is to let these moments, when the kids I work with hit, kick, and spit on me, pass, and to let them go. Although I’m not a parent, this is the job of all parents, though some of them seem to wrestle this simplicity into something much more complicated, imbuing ta…