Mind the Checks

"I’ll just slip into the house to put this stack of laundry away and I’ll be right back. Watch your sister," I told him. I had two full baskets of clean laundry to fold, sitting at the picnic table while the kids played in the front yard. Mitch was very close, planting rosebushes beside the driveway, but the van hid his view of the kids.

I started to walk away. Something inside said, “Don’t leave right now.”

The radio was playing "God is watching over you, as always." I almost turned to my son to stress the reminder, "Remember, you need to watch over your sister, kind of like God watches over you."

I left the words unsaid. I did not respond to the nudge inside.

Halfway up the stairs inside, I heard my little girl crying.

We were very fortunate. The sharp branch left a red mark just beneath her eye, and more sharp branches scraped her chin, arms and legs. She had tried to follow her brother through a tight place between shrubbery and wall. The sort of thing an adult would have caught quickly and said, “No, Sweetie, don’t try to get through that way.” The sort of thing my son knows, but didn’t stop to process. Don’t go places your sister can’t follow, when you know she’s following you.

He cried pitifully and long when he saw all her bandaids and the scrape so close to her eye. And that’s a good lesson for him to learn responsibility. But I knew that ultimate responsibility always lies with those who do the delegating.

And I ignored mine.

“Mind the checks,” my father has often told me, a bit of wisdom passed to him from some older saint. The little “check” inside, that tiny, almost indiscernible bit of resistance, like when a rusty door doesn’t quite open but you push it anyhow and it breaks.

It’s easy to override. But we shouldn’t.