A narrow path
Man on Wire is an amazing documentary about a charismatic French man, Philippe Petit, who secretly walks a tightrope between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. I remember watching it and just being so absorbed that my whole body was tense when he first stepped out onto the wire with a balancing pole but no safety line, a huge crowd of New Yorkers below. I was thinking about that moment the other day when I could see one of my children about to lose their shit over having to get dressed. My body was just as tense, like I was watching them wobbling on the narrowest of wires about to fall. Since then, I have started thinking about the width of my children’s emotional path through the day. Some days I can see it is as wide as a road, others as narrow as the wire Petit stepped out on. What controls the width of that path? Tiredness? Hunger? I don’t know. All I can do is try to act as their balancing pole to help them keep on their path. Unfortunately, some days a wind blows or the path narrows to nothing and the fall is inevitable. Then I have a choice: be one of the crowd below watching him fall or become the thing Petit didn’t have, a safety line, and try to bring them down safely. I don’t always manage that.