Let Me

Someone you love is struggling with a knot. You can see exactly how it goes. Your hands are already moving. Of course they are. You're a good person.

So you take it. Two seconds, done. You hand it back, and they say thanks. Everybody's happy. It would have taken them ten minutes, and you were standing right there.

Then the next knot. And the next. The homework. The phone call. The difficult talk with the landlord. It's faster when you do it. It's always faster when you do it. And you never ask what the ten minutes were for.

You call it helping. They call it helping too. After a while they stop trying, and just hold the knot out to you. You've become very good at knots. They haven't.

And one day you're tired, and a little angry that they need you for everything. You didn't do this out of weakness. You did it out of love. But the struggle you took away was the part that would have made their hands strong.

So try the hardest thing there is. Stay right next to them. And put your hands behind your back.

It takes forever. They get it wrong. They look at you. Stay. Being there is still help. Doing it for them was never the only kind. Some knots really are too big for one person. But most of them were just slow.

And then it opens. Not as neatly as you'd have done it. But it's theirs now, and so is the next one. Whose knot are you holding right now?