i’ll admit that the first time i ventured a glance at a mother who clutched tightly to her child by way of a leash, i was overtaken by a single emotion: JUDGEMENT. and then, after i ranted to my pre-motherhood self about the fact that children are not animals, i made fun of this crazy, leash-toting mama, and all such mamas of her kind.

fate is a conniving little justice-seeker though, and many years after i unleashed this harsh judgement, i gave birth to… a bolter. here is the technical definition of a bolter for those who are not familiar:

bolter: noun, a recalcitrant toddler prone to sudden dashes, runs, flights, or escapes, commonly in areas of high vehicle traffic such as parking lots.

i diagnosed the monkey with this condition when i was no less than eight months pregnant with the bird and on modified bed rest. a leisurely outing to the cupcake bakery turned quickly into a 100-yard-dash across the black asphalt. the monkey was laughing. i was crying, partly because the event scared me to death, and partly because some aspect of me must have known that the purchase of a leash could be in my future.

when i was pregnant with my first son, a wise mama told me that being a mom would make me feel like my heart was living outside of my body. this turned out to be an accurate description. as psychologist janna malamud smith puts is, “there is an enlarged sense of vulnerability…created by becoming a mother — and accepting the intimate mission of keeping a dependent being alive.”

as writer francine prose describes, “all at once, we realize what hostages to fortune we are, how fragile and precious life is — our own lives, and those of our children. even the bravest of us may find ourselves transformed almost beyond recognition into skittish, nervous versions of our former selves.”

i’m thinking about purchasing the above-pictured leash for the monkey. (it’s perfect for him, right?) i’m certain that i’ll be on the receiving end of the kind of judgment i dished out so naively before… before my wild and reckless heart was living outside of my body… before i wanted to tie a string around it and never let it go.

[sources for this post can be found on the bibliography page on the sidebar to your right.]

[don’t forget to enter the billboard bag GIVEAWAY found in saturday’s post.]