I was trying to give my grieving son room to breathe.

That it was very nearly the wrong call is something I live with.

That it turned out all right is something I thank God for.

It is one of the small mercies of this story that my failure to push that night did no harm.

But I have thought since about how close I came, and how a mother’s respect for her child’s privacy, which is usually a virtue, very nearly let me miss the fact that my son was drowning.

I have turned that over often since, the fine and difficult line a parent walks between respecting a child’s growing need for a private self and staying close enough to catch them when they are in trouble.