The Hairline Fractures....

I'm an avid reader.  Always have been.  Books, road signs, cereal boxes: Whatever is in front of me, I read.  Inevitably, some random line, however unrelated to me in the context in which it was written, will catch my heart and stay for a while. 

Tony Hillerman's daughter Anne has continued his Joe Leaphorn Navajo detective series (one of many genres that I truly love).  Frequently a second author in a series will fail to really manage to get the spirit and the language of the series (although David Langercrantz did well taking over for Steig Larson in the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series IMO), but so far...

At the end of the very first chapter of her first Leaphorn novel, Spider Woman's Daughter, she uses the phrase, "the damn tears forced their way out, rushing through the hairline cracks in her willpower."

Well.

I had to put the book down for a bit.

If ever there was  a phrase that spoke of what it is like to parent a sick child, this....This is a good one.  

You see, I think I was pretty solid once.  But "solid" and "unbreakable" are not at all the same thing. Drop a china cup once and you'll see what I mean: It goes from "solid" to "shattered" in no time at all!  But even things that are less fragile than china cannot always take being slammed over and over and over again.

Don't get me wrong: Babygirl is doing quite well, for now. She isn't graduating high school on schedule, but she has been asked to attend her prom, which touched my heart far more than I would have thought, pushing tears out "though the hairline cracks in my willpower" far more often than I would have imagined possible, actually.  When a fragile child (oh, she's gonna hate being described that way, I'm betting!), more accurately, a medically fragile child, makes a milestone that you, as a parent, were 100% certain you would not see arrive?  It shines a light in your soul; a bright, happy light.

And all those hairline cracks?  Well, I guess they let more than tears leak out.  

DeeDee