What do you most regret losing?
My regret is not for myself, but for my son. Perhaps it is something that happens when one becomes a parent; we cease to be so concerned about ourselves and spend most of our time thinking of them. I never realized before I had a child that it would be this way; as an only child it was easy to become self-centered, and even after I was grown I was so concerned with school and getting a law degree, and then there was my career…
But a child changes everything, and there was that moment when I held him for the first time and looked into his tiny face and made a silent pledge to him that I would keep him safe and try to make the world as wonderful a place as I could for him. It’s the kind of promise many parents make in earnest, but unfortunately the world has other ideas about it, and though we may fancy ourselves to be strong and in control sometimes things are simply beyond it.
Still, even with the best intents we can be misguided. I had hoped that keeping Leo’s father in his life would be beneficial to him in the long run, even once it became obvious that it would not. How could it when Roger so obviously didn’t care about him? I always had a fear that Roger would do something like kidnap Leo just to get back at me, but I never dreamed things would happen as they did. And so in the end what I regret the loss of is my son’s innocence and inner peace, though it seems he is more resilient than anyone would expect. His good-natured personality appears to be largely intact, but there are shadows in his eyes that weren’t there before, and I will always feel partly responsible for putting them there.
But a child changes everything, and there was that moment when I held him for the first time and looked into his tiny face and made a silent pledge to him that I would keep him safe and try to make the world as wonderful a place as I could for him. It’s the kind of promise many parents make in earnest, but unfortunately the world has other ideas about it, and though we may fancy ourselves to be strong and in control sometimes things are simply beyond it.
Still, even with the best intents we can be misguided. I had hoped that keeping Leo’s father in his life would be beneficial to him in the long run, even once it became obvious that it would not. How could it when Roger so obviously didn’t care about him? I always had a fear that Roger would do something like kidnap Leo just to get back at me, but I never dreamed things would happen as they did. And so in the end what I regret the loss of is my son’s innocence and inner peace, though it seems he is more resilient than anyone would expect. His good-natured personality appears to be largely intact, but there are shadows in his eyes that weren’t there before, and I will always feel partly responsible for putting them there.