In hindsight, it's perfectly obvious that 6-year-olds and gasoline are a combustible combination, and yet I had to learn this lesson the hard way.
It is Saturday and I am finally unwinding after the end of my first week in a new job thousands of miles away. I am so grateful to be back home with my family that I don't even mind my son's impromptu doctor visit to remove the popcorn he put in his ear. I'm thinking we can still have a fairly uneventful weekend. We are at the gas station when my hopes evaporate.
I remember standing by the car and showing my son how to hold the gas pump in the opening of the car's tank. I remember us having to stop pumping and start again because the tank wasn't yet full. I remember my son pointing the nozzle in the general direction of my face and suddenly my life changed.
I'm sure I screamed, although I don't remember that. I know I called for my husband, who was in the car. I wanted him to help me and to make sure our son was OK (he was). With the assistance of a good Samaritan I never saw, I walked into the restroom to wash my eyes, my ears, my face. I know my husband and I had an inane conversation about whether I should go to a doctor's office or the emergency room. And then, the reality:
"I don't know if I can see," I said.
From the time the spray hit my face, I assumed that I had seen my son for the last time, that the last image I'd have of him would be holding that pump, and that we'd both have to live with that.
My husband said, "What do you mean you don't know? Have you opened your eyes?"
"No," I said. "I'm afraid to."
I opened my eyes only to discover that my vision was unimpaired. I could feel burning, but I was so grateful that I didn't mind the pain.
We spent the afternoon being treated like a walking hazmat situation at the hospital, and it was not until hours later that I realized how close my life had been to exploding, literally and figuratively.
Imagine something sparked near me, my son or my husband while we were soaked with gasoline. Imagine that my son had sprayed himself instead of me. Not only would the damage have been greater and more difficult to bear, but my husband and I would no doubt have been answering questions from social services.
I would have to explain what I was thinking -- what was I thinking?! -- and why I made the choices I made. I'm a fairly self-aware parent, but I have no idea why I took that risk, why I didn't realize what a risk I was taking.
It's true, as the doctor who treated me said, that we don't think about petroleum and its power. It is invisible and often odorless. But so are most things that threaten us.
After I was given salve for my chemically burned ear, I became angry at how irresponsible I was.
I felt like I was the lit match, enflaming my son's boyish curiosity and tendency toward excitement. How often, I wondered, do we make a situation worse instead of better, either through our carelessness or foolishness or simply because we're human? How often do we get a second chance?
The gift of vision has given me a second sight, another chance to explore when it is safe to light a match and when it's best to be armed with an extinguisher.
There's a widespread superstition that all things, good and bad, happen in threes. So, after two medical emergencies in one weekend, I kept waiting for my husband to take his turn. My vigilance seemed paranoid at first, and then wise. I don't know what will spark our next crisis, I just know that at the first flickering flame, I want to be ready.
As it turns out, the next weekend, it was my husband's turn to head to the emergency room. While demolishing a shed in our backyard, as requested by the family buying our house, his leg was slashed by broken glass. Not too long after, I received a response to the above column that disturbed me, and spurred me to write the below. It was called "The reader isn't always right" and ran two weeks after the previous column.
As a young writer, I learned that the reader is always right.
If a reader was confused or led astray, then it was the writer's responsibility to clarify or redirect. As an editor, I feel the same way. If I read a submission that is unclear or unfocused, I make or suggest changes with the confidence of righteousness. I am every reader, and I am their gatekeeper. If I don't understand something, how will anyone else?
As a columnist, I have learned a different lesson. Sometimes, readers are wrong.
I have enjoyed many positive comments from people who have appreciated my writing. Some found my work comforting. Some found it enlightening. A few even thought I was amusing. And I basked in the glow of their praise, feeling I had communicated in a way that helped people make connections to themselves and to others.
But if I choose to believe my own publicity, then I am forced to accept the criticism, too. I have to vigorously seek the grain of sand that I hoped would turn into a pearl, but which became stuck instead in the oyster's craw, undeveloped.
This effort was sparked by a piece of hate mail, the first -- and so far, only -- I've received. The mail was inspired by a column I wrote about the experience of having gasoline sprayed in my face by my son. It was an accident for which I was far more responsible than he, since he is 6 and I unwittingly (and without defense) provided the loaded weapon.
Nevertheless, one reader of this column felt compelled to tell me that the incident was actually natural selection at work, that I was not fit to be a parent. While it may be wise to question my mothering skills, the note made me pause and wonder how my actions and reactions could have been so misunderstood. How could the reader have gotten it so wrong? Was it that I hadn't communicated clearly or that the horror he felt at my decisions superseded any means I might have found of better expressing them? I wondered whether it was appropriate for me to write about that topic, or any really personal topic, in such a forum. Does the benefit of turning my world into words outweigh the risk?
As I was pondering this question, another columnist approached me about the same incident, wondering if he could use it as an example of parental patience.
How can two readers follow the same path and reach an entirely differently conclusion?
I think part of the answer lies in what readers bring to a situation.
Readers come to a text looking for and expecting something. They want a break from their chores, insight into their struggles, the answer to their prayers.
Readers also come to a text wearing a particular pair of metaphorical glasses. They see situations and draw inferences based on what they know of life and what they want to know. They adjust for their beliefs and their hopes, the way they think things are and the way they want them to be. Just as we form an impression of a person, we picture an author, a character, and a setting based on our imaginations.
And it is that imagination which an author cannot and should not control. It is that imagination which inspires us to read in the first place. But just as some people paint me as a saint, others will see me as a sinner. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between.
I suppose I could affix a warning to top of this column: Imperfect Liberal Mother Reveals Her Mistakes. We could attach similar descriptions to newspaper stories, magazine articles, books: "Only readers who agree with the author need proceed." In fact, we have a word for people who decide whether material is "appropriate" to read. We call them "censors."
In the interest of a free and democratic society, I'll read the hate mail and the love letters, and learn to take both less seriously.
These LifeFiles columns originally appeared on about 70 TV station websites managed by Internet Broadcasting Systems.