I was washing the dishes at the kitchen sink. Sadie, who is almost two, pushed a kitchen chair up to the stovetop directly behind me, climbed onto it, and began twisting the dials to turn on the burners. She did all this in maybe twenty seconds. Luckily I was right there. Luckily I grabbed her, soapy hands and all, and set her unharmed on the floor. Not one of my older kids has ever tried to mess with the stove. Not one. Not ever. The dials are up high, far out of reach, and mostly out of sight, I thought. Sometimes I think that even if we had twenty kids, every one of them would come up with some new thing to get into, some new way to surprise us. (Um, not that we’re going to have twenty kids. Just to be clear.)

A good friend had a baby this week, had a lovely, normal birth that turned complicated and could have ended very, very badly. The baby is fine—strong and beautiful, I’ve seen her myself—and her mama is recovering quickly. But still, this wasn’t what we expected.

Some days I’m reminded how little we control, even when we spend our days pretending at being in charge, with our childproofed homes and our safe neighborhoods and our reasonable expectations. There is so little, so very little we can really claim to have a handle on. I can accept that for myself, but the thing is: even if I can’t control anything, I’m still responsible for these little people who need me to be in charge of a thing or two.

Or maybe they don’t need that, maybe I just want to give that to them. An orderly world, where if we follow the rules, do the things we’re supposed to do, we’ll all be safe. We like to think we live in a world like that. Most often it works that way. But sometimes not. And there’s not much I can do about that.

Those stove dials, though, they can be removed. I’m keeping them in a locked drawer for now.