More than one way to skin a wolf

Anonybabe got her first skinned knee last week. She got it while Anonyhub was watching her, and I didn't want to ask and come across as the overzealous mother, so I can only assume she scraped it on the concrete in our back yard. At first I tried to direct her to the softer grass when we were out back, but then I realized if it doesn't bother her -- if it in fact delights her to crawl across it with bare feet, knees, and hands -- then why should it bother me? She's developed a method of picking up her legs when she does it, so all we've had to fear are extremely dirty legs at the end of the day.

I was so proud when I saw those two little hardened rust color blobs on her leg. Work-a-day bruises and scrapes on children represent a life well-lived, I say. There's such a tug-of-war going on in me regarding Anonybabe's independence. Part of me is so excited for her to be doing things on her own, for her sake and mine. And part of me wants to morph with her and never let her go. That part of me is frightening.

I just listened to an address by Bill Moyers to a group dedicated to a renaissance of certain standards in news media. It was good, but I only mention it because of a tale he used to illustrate a point. It regarded a wise man who told his grandson that he always had two wolves battling inside him. One was the wolf of greed and anger, cynicism and hatred. And the other was the wolf of love and activism, empathy and heroism. "Which wolf won?" asked the grandson. And the grandfather replied, "The one I fed."

Nice, eh? So I'm going to feed the wolf of independence in my daughter, while trying desperately to figure out what it means to be interdependent, so I can feed that wolf most of all.