During the summer, my family stumbled on an abandoned orchard while picking blackberries. I went back a few weekends ago with a friend to see what sort of fruit was ripening on the trees, and whether it was edible.
We discovered plums, pears and two types of apples. My friend Chantelle set her smallest boy in the grass and started climbing up the tree toward the apples.
My oldest son, Alex, quickly followed Chantelle up the tree. Alex is an excellent climber and is fearless about heights. He was soon shaking apples down into the grass for me and Chantelle's little boys to gather.
I am afraid of heights. I don't climb trees. When Alex started climbing the big maple tree in our front yard five years ago, I didn't like it.
"Get down out of that tree before you fall and break your neck!" I'd holler, my neck craned as I watched him monkey around in the tree.
"Mom, I'm fine!" he called back. "I'm not going to fall."
I was about to insist when my husband Clayton stepped out the front door.
"Leave him alone," he said quietly. "The tree is his place where no one can follow him. He needs it."
I swallowed my fear and let him be, until the day he fell out of the tree. He slipped while using a rope ladder Clayton had put up.
He landed partly on the packed earth under the maple, and partly on a root. He did not get up.
After the tears and the first aid and the trip to the hospital (no broken bones, no concussion, and barely a bruise), Clayton and I had a vicious argument about climbing.
I felt climbing must be banned. It was obviously dangerous.
Clayton wouldn't give, though. He argued the rope ladder was unsafe, and he'd take it down, but Alex must continue to climb if he chose to do so.
"You don't know what it will do to him to take this away," he warned. "He needs to climb."
"What about the risk?" I said. "What if he gets seriously hurt from a fall? What about spinal-cord damage, brain damage?"
As he went to take down the ladder, Clayton just said, "Life is a risk."
That was the moment I rethought my purpose as a parent. I accepted the fact I could not keep him safe 100 per cent of the time.
Now I started wondering whether perfect safety was a bad idea. What damage do we do to children when we try to remove all risk from their lives?
We warn them so much about strangers that they never learn to have a polite conversation with someone in public.
We worry so much about abduction and molestation that we are afraid to send them to collect for charity in a neighbourhood where they know everyone, or to trick-or-treat without a parent.
We fret about healthy eating and balanced lunches so that we can't trust a 10-year-old to pack his or her own school lunch, even with guidelines. We worry about traffic on the school route, so we increase it by driving our kids to school, even when we live within walking distance in a safe part of the city.
I want my children to be safe. I insist they wear their helmets when cycling. I teach them about good touches and bad touches.
We tell them they can talk to strangers, but can never go anywhere with a stranger, not even a single step. They've taken a safety course.
But I am no longer willing to limit their living, their essence, who they are and what they need to do to be themselves, for the sake of an impossible state of risk-free living.
So Alex climbs trees. Naomi is beginning what I suspect will be a lifelong love affair with surfing.
Isaac drives his bike all over the neighbourhood (he's the cautious type, so this is daring for him.)
And I try to remember worrying has never saved a single life - but knowing how to climb may just come in handy someday.
The apples were delicious, by the way. I used them for a tart for Thanksgiving dinner.
Alex was so proud of his apples, he ate two helpings for dessert.
