Climbing Higher

Let’s say your eight-year-old daughter is a climber: railings, fences, utility boxes. Let’s say trees are her favorite. Every June, when the mulberries ripen, she scales the branches and stuffs her cheeks like a hamster, returning with sticky purple hands and a grin. 

Let’s say her climbing makes your heart leap up your throat, so you have to swallow hard to stuff it back down. Let’s say your husband is a rigger and works at heights, and you’ve heard him teach her about safety—to keep three points of contact at all times, to look ahead to where she is going. He reminds you repeatedly to trust in him, to trust in her. But let’s say that even though you want to, you can’t help it: the vision of her slipping and falling strong-arms you every time she’s off the ground. So you tell her not to climb high. You tell her to come down. 

Let’s say that in your parents’ backyard, your daughter scuttles up a wooden post. Like a ladybug climbing a stalk, she scootches hands and feet, limbs nimble and swift. Your anxiety starts to climb, too. And let’s say your dad watches from his back porch, tight-lipped and frowning; you know his look of disapproval, ingrained from your own childhood. 

Let’s say that at the top of the wooden post, two wide and thick beams cross horizontally. Empty hooks at every end wait for baskets of red geraniums and purple and yellow pansies to be hung. Your daughter clambers to the top, her silver sequined shoes flashing, hand-me-downs from her cousin that she insisted on wearing. Let’s say she calls out, “Hi, Mama!” and waves frantically. You stop breathing with the thought she’ll throw herself off balance. She creeps across one beam on all fours. Rests her head and belly, lounging jaguar-like, arms and legs dangling. Like she’s warming in the sun. You can almost hear her purring. 

And let’s say your father steps closer. You know he’s about to say the kind of thing he said to you as a kid, with his voice low and stern, full of be careful and it’s too dangerous. So often it became your voice. His limitations absorbed as your own. 

And let’s just say, you don’t want this for your daughter. Maybe you wave back at her. Maybe you turn to your dad, a hand on his shoulder. Maybe you tell him, “Hey, Dad, it’s okay. She can do this.” And maybe your daughter hears you say this, too.  

Lina Lau is a green tea drinker, mother, and writer from Toronto, Canada. Her creative nonfiction appears in River Teeth, Hippocampus Magazine, XRAY Literary Magazine, Sky Island Journal, and elsewhere. She's currently working on a memoir of flash and fragmented essays exploring identity, motherhood, intergenerational connection, and raising her daughters differently than how she was raised. She owns too many notebooks and writes during the in-between moments of work and parenting. Find her on Instagram @_linalau_ and on Bluesky @linalau.bsky.social.  

This essay is a Short Reads original.