No parent, no matter how patient, has a perfect record. We lose our temper. We react out of instinct—to protect them or someone else. We say something that comes off as harsher than we ended.

We don’t mean to, but we do. But just because we didn’t mean to doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, that it doesn’t sear into their memory or their sense of the world. Of course it does. This is why we have to work hard, why we have to repair, why we have to remember how heavy our words and actions can land.

Sharon Old’s haunting poem, “​The Clasp​” reminds us of this. It’s so good that it is worth printing in whole in today’s email.

She was four, he was one, it was raining, we had colds, 

we had been in the apartment two weeks straight, 

I grabbed her to keep her from shoving him over on his

face, again, and when I had her wrist 

in my grasp I compressed it fiercely, for almost a 

second, to make an impression on her, 

to hurt her, our beloved firstborn, I even nearly 

savored the stinging sensation of the squeezing, the

expression, into her, of my anger, 

“Never, never again,” the righteous 

chant accompanying the clasp. It happened very 

fast—grab, crush, crush, 

crush, release–and at the first extra 

force, she swung her head, as if checking 

who this was, and looked at me, 

and saw me—yes, this was her mom, 

her mom was doing this. Her dark, 

deeply open eyes took me 

in, she knew me, in the shock of the moment 

she learned me. This was her mother, one of the 

two whom she most loved, the two 

who loved her most, near the source of love 

was this.

Read it, let it wreck you and then do better.