The greatest weight.

I find as a parent that the greatest weight I carry is that I can't protect my children from the world. I can coach them to make good choices, ensure they are in good hands when I'm not with them, make sure they are scared of the things they should be scared of and cautious when they should be cautious, respect them in a way that allows them to feel comfortable telling me anything, create a home environment where they feel safe and free to be themselves, stay informed about the things that can harm them (you know, lead paint; pesticides; polyvinyl chloride (#3), polystyrene (#6), and polycarbonate (#7) plastics; sex offenders living within a 5-mile radius...) and try to prevent them from being exposed to things they are too young to assimilate.

Two Tallahassee children died in very tragic car accidents last week. A four-year-old was hit by a van when he darted across the street in front of his school, and a high school student died when one of her wheels ran off the road (one of our beautiful but dangerous two-lane, no shoulder, "canopy" roads lined by huge oak trees) and by overcompensating she went across traffic and hit a tree. Split-second mistakes that ended their lives. We all have examples from our teenage years of lives cut short, and I'm sure we can all come up with at least one incident that we look back at and think, "What the hell was I thinking?!" Thus the weight.

At a girls' night last weekend we were all talking about the crazy things we did as teenagers. (BTW Mom and Dad, compared to every single person I know (well, other than Lewis Snell), I was an angel teenager. No kidding!) One of the moms commented on how she hopes her daughters won't sneak out like she did, and another mom so nonchalantly said, "But they will."

We can only *hope* that there isn't the fatal choice made in a split second.

So we do the best we can to protect them now and to prepare them for the world when the decisions are in their hands.

And just so you know what sent me down this road, I'll give you the advice that you now need to change the drain on your pool and make sure your kids aren't ever playing near the drain of a public pool--even the kid-sized public pool: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/15/entrapment.pools/index.html

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