Not to Worry

Last Saturday, I was trying to balance Madeleine's healthy impulse to stay inside the warm house with the boys' interest in sliding down iced-over snowy slopes in the back yard on specially-crafted slabs of plastic. I sledded with the boys for awhile, but at one point, Madeleine and Daniel and I were in the house, and Daniel was snuggling with me, so I asked Madeleine to look out the window just to check on Ian, or - as I put it at the time - to "make sure Ian's okay."

Daniel put me at ease with his response - completely devoid of a trace of humor or irony:

"Yeah, Ian's always okay."

Daniel's onto something. Ian has a tendency to be okay much of the time, no doubt in part due to his first-born inclination toward self-preservation.

(January 14, 2012)