Life changes when you use an EPI-pen on your child.

We are visiting her cousins, enjoying our Father’s Day. We are having a day of playing and resting and sharing an incredible meal with family. And then she eats cake.

We were in the next room, the formal dining room. Rose and I could see her through the short hallway. Something was wrong, which really is only one thing. Rose moved quickly, grabbing the supplies with uncanny speed: she had the Benadryl poured before I was even on my feet. She gave it to her and asked how she was feeling. Rose looked at me and I knew what had to come next.

We had just determined the protocol last week. We knew what the page looked like so that we could be on the same one, and in that moment, we turned to it. I already had the pen in my hand and reading the directions and figuring out how it really had to be and thinking about the force that is required and Rose reminds me that you have to do it hard, so that you hear the click. And as I drew back that O.D. scene from Pulp Fiction flashed through my brain and I plunged the needle into my daughter’s thigh.

You don’t wonder about things until they happen, right? You don’t worry about your relationship until there’s something there, you know? And now I’ve done something to my daughter–I’ve hurt her; she cried–and I wonder If there is anything to change that. Even if it saved her life, she can’t know that. She knows that I did something that hurt her.

On Father’s Day, I’m wondering what it means to be that kind of parent–the parent I am now–who’s ways can’t be known to her; she just can’t know them; but one day she might start to understand. When she is facing the safety of her child and doing what is best for him.

The divine parent gives us this chance. Too bad it sucks to feel this way.