People who have never once stood at that particular terrible edge cannot quite understand it, and I do not blame them for it; I did not understand it myself until I stood there.

When your child is well, his running is simply running, a pleasant background noise of childhood you barely notice.

When your child has nearly died, and then does not, his running becomes something almost unbearable to watch, a daily miracle so enormous it can stop you where you stand with a dish towel in your hands and tears in your eyes over nothing at all, over a boy and a dog and a stretch of ordinary grass.

I made a promise to myself, in those first coastal months, that I would never let it become ordinary to me, that I would keep noticing it, keep being undone by it, for the rest of my life.