It doesn’t matter how much money you have. It doesn’t matter how safe a neighborhood you live in. It doesn’t matter how close you watch them. We are all vulnerable.
As the great Joan Didion observed in her haunting memoir (and must read parenting book, Blue Nights) having a child makes someone a hostage to fortune. Life has something over us now, something that matters to us more than even the most selfish, self-interested state could. We have something to worry over. Something we love more than life itself. We’ll never be happier than our unhappiest child…
This is terrifying. As Ben Franklin noted, the bigger your family, the broader the mark you are for sorrow. He’s not wrong. We’ve got multiple hearts running out around outside our body, and those kids just aren’t the safest or the smartest. But it’s not all bad news, as Franklin noted. For children–the bigger the brood–also means we “stand a broader mark for pleasure too.”
Because our children’s happiness is also ours. We have so many more things to enjoy now, so many things to enjoy for a second or a third time. We have more heart than we had before. We are a hostage to fortune, good and bad. Something terrible may happen, as Didion had to bear, but many, many, many wonderful things will happen also (as she was lucky enough to experience too).
We’re a target now, a bigger one.
