My grandson hurt himself today. Not horribly, but bad enough that he’s been crying for two+ hours.

On a lovely spring day — temps in the lower 70s — he was on the deck w/ his folks, crawling happily around. Apparently, the threshold strip is too hot for baby hands. 🙁 Even though I felt it later, and it seemed only very warm to me, it raised blisters on newish palms.

This is bad enough, but remember: at 11 months old, you use your hands for EVERYTHING. Crawling, eating, holding, exploring. And blisters HURT.

So a day that began beautifully — with a hungry Trin chowing down on his brunch of eggwhite from my breakfast sandwich, Cheerios, and bananas — in the flash of an instant went to trauma.

That is, I suspect, the nature of life & Buddhism, right? Change… even when life changes (at least temporarily) for the worse. But listening to my beloved grandson sobbing his heart out, as his mommy & daddy try to soothe him? Heart-rending. I try to console myself with the idea of kintsugi, mending broken places with gold (or kisses and parental love). The idea being that damaged places can be beautiful — they make us human, make us grow.

But it still doesn’t seem very fair…