The Crib was Half Full

September 30, 2021

When I was a toddler, the crack of dawn would wake me up crazy-early every day, and I was immediately ready for action. Stay asleep when there was a world to be explored? Not I: I learned to escape both from my crib and from my diaper far too soon for my parents' comfort. One fuzzy gray winter's morning when I was 2-and-a-half and my sister was 1, my mother heard, through the haze of sleep, a series of deep thumps coming from our room. (All parents have been there: Half of your brain knows there's some problem, but the other half wants so badly to sleep that it tries to pretend it's no big deal.)

Thump... thump... thump... THUMP. A long and dramatic pause. And then a panicked call for MOMMY.

My mother rushed down the hall to discover that I had somehow THUMPED my crib over to my sister's to make it easier to climb up and over. But I had apparently underestimated both my own THUMPing ability and the distance of the gap: My mother found me without a stitch of clothing on, hovering over space, with one foot on each crib gate, unable to make it either into my sister's sleeping space or back to my own.

My mother was faced with a choice: She could mentally zoom down the Dark Path, the one that imagines head injuries and worse, and allow her fear to fuel an angry talking-to so that I'd be too scared to try it again. Or she could laugh, count her blessings, and quietly figure out a way to secure the crib to the wall to prevent further incidents. And she could put a great story in her pocket, reflecting that it might come in handy in a decade or two (or four, as it turns out!).

I'm better off for having had a mom who could laugh. And also for the fact that the Internet did not exist when I was 2.

I wish you the peace that comes from a presence of mind and a sense of humor.

—Deb