I Wish I’d Never Been Born

There was a brief conversation tonight between my son and daughter that had me holding on to the mop with the strongest grip I could muster, waiting to hear how it came out.   There are things children will tell other people that they won't tell their parents.  There are things in the case of my daughter that she can't actually tell us also because she just doesn't know because she can't see. 

There was an audiobook playing in that cat series my daughter is in love with.  In this case, my son was listening to the book—one about five books behind his sister—when a conversation happened between two cats.  One of the cast, a young initiate was angry because he wasn't doing well as a potential warrior in the cat clan.  He was talking to the healer cat who was cleaning his wounds.   She talked about all the other skills he had, like how he could recognize smells that other cats couldn't.   He was upset and said, "I hate being blind.  I wish I was never born."

My son piped up and asked my daughter, "Do you wish you were never born because you're blind?"  This is the bit where I held on to the mop with near nail breaking force.  My daughter casually replied, "No."  Then she followed up with, "He's completely blind, I'm not."

I took a sigh of relief and was about to think the danger was over when my son helpfully said in a know-it-all voice, "um, I hate to tell you, but you are."   I asked him to come into the bedroom with me shortly after that and had a talk with him about how it looked to everyone that his sister was blind because it didn't seem like she could see anything but that she did have vision.   And that the vision she had was precious to her and it also meant to her that she wasn't completely blind.   I told him he was always supportive of her, something that never failed to impress me and make me proud, and if he could support her feeling that she wasn't completely blind, it would be a nice thing to do. 

I'm glad she wants to be alive.   She was depressed for a good while.  Lately she's been enjoying school, has good friends and has enough things she enjoys doing that she's not bored all the time like she was some time back. .

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Cleaning Helpers:  Our house cleaner, who has been with me since 1997, is taking a break from both COVID-19 rising incidents but also because she has been diagnoses with breast cancer. It was caught early and is treatable but is scary nonetheless.   We love her and miss her and hope her a speedy recovery with complete remission.  In the meantime, we're cleaning our own house and today was major cleaning day.   The children learned how to dust (they loved the dusting), did laundry, swept, cleaned their bathrooms including the toilets.   They weren't keen to help at the beginning but got into it after a while.   Two solid hours of house cleaning helpers was most definitely a lot of help.   We have put off cleaning for so long that the floors were looking more like the outdoors than the indoors at the high-traffic doors.