Sometimes amongst the peanut butter sandwiches and carpool lanes a parent is given a gift.  It is one of the best parts of being a parent.  It's the gift of awakening, an awakening for the child.  Many times these moments are so slight that it would be easy to miss.  They are the cracks along the shell, spreading and weakening the egg so that one day that chick may leave.  I was lucky enough to see one of these awakenings and let me tell you they are so powerful that they can knock you flat.  

One evening last week we were finishing up the end of Where the Wild things Are, a movie I was worried might scare our four-year-old.  My girls are both fairly sensitive to anything remotely scary or dark.  This is not a light movie as many of you know; it is touching and real and difficult.  From Zoe's spot positioned between myself and David I heard a choke.  One of those incoherent noises that is hard to define.  I looked down to see Zoe barely holding it together, tears caught in the rim of her saucer eyes, mouth pulled downward.  She looked up at me with this expression of total bewilderment and at that moment I was struck with the realization that she got it.  She felt their loss and sadness.  Her heart was aching for those characters that were saying goodbye.    

This is the thing, the thing about parenting that is so amazing.  We are entrusted with these lives that haven't yet grasped all of the fundamentals of life.  Compassion and empathy are not easy emotions to learn or teach.  Then, one day, it comes in a wave and they feel it.  They know and it is both heart-breaking and beautiful at the same time.  That moment feels like purity.  Truth.  And it makes me feel like the luckiest person in the world to be allowed a part of these small people's lives.