I’m a child, in bed, lights out, lying awake and worrying about my family members or myself dying. I have no particular reason to be concerned, no concept of death beyond that of geographically distant elderly relatives, but I worry. And I figure there is one thing I can do about it, entirely on my own.
I can imagine these deaths taking place. Not in gruesome detail—I’m lucky I’ve never had that kind of imagination—but just the fact of them. And I can imagine how they might feel. And I can cry.
And I think: if I really get the feelings right, truly imagine these calamities, I can prevent them from happening.
I grow up. I no longer have the inherent helplessness small children have, but I have acquired grown-up helplessness: the knowledge that there are events we cannot prevent. The awareness of nature’s slyness as it hands us surprises in exactly the form we did not think to consider.
I outgrow these preventative imaginings.
Or so I think.
Until the next check-up. Until the next suspected symptom of something not quite normal. Until.
I don’t outgrow them after all.
This Glass Has Water 