I was watching a baseball game with Bob. I commented on how much one of the players reminded me of my brother, Craig.

“I’m not seeing it. At all,” Bob responded.

“Because it wasn’t the face you knew. It’s his nine year old face. Before it morphed into his adult face. Still soft around the edges.”

Nine year old Craig still sucked his thumb. My mom was desperate for him to stop. I think Craig was just as eager to abandon the habit. She tried all kinds of tactics. Nothing worked.

One night she wrapped an ace bandage around his hand, making it impossible for him to get his thumb in his mouth.

The next morning, he came into my room, his curly hair all wild from sleep. He had his hand behind his back. 

When he got close, he brought his hand out from behind his back with a flourish, “Ta-dah!”

It was hysterical! His hand was five times its normal size. We laughed and laughed. 

“Wait til Mom sees it! She's going to crack up. Put it behind your back, just like you did for me.”

We knocked on her bedroom door, barely able to suppress our laughter.

Mom opened the door and smiled, knowing we were up to something.

Craig whipped his giant hand out from behind his back, “Ta-Dah!”

My mom looked at it and started screaming. What in the world? Why can’t she see the hilarity of it all?

She was on the phone with a doctor within minutes, and per his directions, she filled one pan with cold water and another with hot water. She alternated putting his giant hand first in the cold, then in the hot. She was choking back sobs, berating herself, saying she didn’t care if he sucked his thumb the rest of his life, she was done with the interventions.

I don’t know how many dunks it took, but his hand did shrink back to its normal size.

Disaster averted, my mom sighed her oft repeated phrase, “Live and learn.”

I’d heard those words a thousand times. I’d started to resent them. Why couldn’t we learn what we needed to know without living through one disaster after another? 

Now, I’ve adopted the same mantra. What’s the alternative? Bemoan every misstep until I feel properly chastised?  It’s actually a healthy habit. Own it, learn from it, and do the next right thing. Obviously, we can’t be too glib about it, or trivialize it. But we don’t learn by skipping blissfully through life. We learn through the stumbles and the sorrow. And so it goes.

I walked a mile with Pleasure, 

She chattered all the way,

But left me none the wiser,

For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow,

And ne’er a word said she,

But oh, the things I learned from her

When Sorrow walks with me!

                       —“Along the Road”

                            by Robert Browning Hamilton