Like most of us, my own children used to be quite young. I suppose it’s a phase. We think it lasts too long and then later we think it doesn’t last long enough. We never quite get over contradictions such as these.

Children. There’s an illusion of innocence that lingers long after the fact. We want it to linger. (It reminds us of something we no longer have.) We need it to linger, and so it does, like fragile crystal, poorly placed too near the edge.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, the children mimic, but words will never hurt me. Even as children, we soon know this to be a lie. We know this long before we know that we know it.

True story. My sons, young as they once were (let’s say seven and five), were having a difference of opinion, I don’t remember what about. (They probably don’t remember either.) I listened to them while fixing pancakes for dinner, which we considered a treat. As the frying pan turned red, their back-and-forth grew heated. And they’re sitting there, on bar stools at the counter, half watching me, half arguing, and as I pour the batter into the pan the name-calling begins. There’s a sense of something inevitable, a moment when you catch your breath while the pancake flips in the air and then … lands in the pan. Heads I win, tails you lose.

Sticks and stones may break my bones …

One of them spoke up. (Which one will remain a mystery to all but those involved.)

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me … asshole.

We laughed. We all laughed. Our stomachs soon ached with fits of laughter, then ached with pangs of hunger, and then later, perhaps much later, they ached with something else, ached with the pain of something lost, and the pain of something gained.

And we enjoyed our dinner of pancakes that evening, all three of us, together.