It is delicate work, relieving a child of a weight he mistakes for his own spine.

You have to be strong enough to carry it and patient enough to let him believe, for as long as he needs to, that he is still the one holding it up.

Ollie needed a long time to believe it.

But somewhere in that first year, the weight passed over, and I felt it settle onto me where it belonged, and I have carried it gladly every day since, because that is the whole of what an adult is for — to be the one under the weight, so the children can be light.

Chapter 8 — Did You Stop