To Growing Pains

You creep in when the children settle in at the end of the day. You’re in their legs first, the calves, the thighs.

Just when it seemed the child was going to sleep, just when it seemed the day was winding down nicely, and for once, there was nothing to do tonight but watch a show and head off to bed, the children call out from their bedrooms.

Doctors say growing pains are not pains from growth, that it’s not the lengthening of bone and ligaments that hurts.

It’s all the playing, the running and jumping, bending and falling. The racing around the playground. The way, nervous, they bang their legs against the side of the chair as they finish their math tests.

The way to tell, the doctors say, is to touch the child. Pain from a disease or injury hurts more when touched, and the child will pull away.

But growing pains feel better when touched. A heating pad placed on the legs.

How quickly the children settle down.

You may not be the pain that comes from the bone, but you were not misnamed. You are growing pains. If kids will play so hard it hurts, perhaps we have misnamed play. It is the work of children. They grow into their bodies and push so hard that sometimes, at night, it feels as if their bodies are simply not big enough. Their very souls ache to do more.

We comfort them until the day nothing works anymore, and they burst out, souls to wind. The cool night air soothes them, and the pain of having grown so much in one day softens, maybe fades completely. And we hope they make it home before they fall asleep.