I believe in grace, but I live by karma. This distinction is only one of a few thousand contradictions that define me, but hey–at least I’m aware of it, right?

I constantly prefer the tit-for-tat method of living, the “you be nice to me and I’ll be nice to you, and vice versa” brand of social interaction. If there’s a petty or passive way to resolve (i.e., not resolve) a dispute, I’ll cling to it like a life raft unless/until forced to be a bigger person. Usually, annoyingly, by The Husband, who–though I’ve known for awhile is a better human being than I am–keeps providing opportunities for the lesson to be hammered home, this ever-returning drumbeat of grace.

Were it up to me, the school playground would be (as it is for so many, AHEM) a battleground for deep-seated insecurities to play themselves out as a drama amidst the backdrop of blissfully unaware children. Recently, at the annual fundraiser for one such school that my son may or may not attend, TH and I were engaged in a bidding war over a birthday sign. It was a repeat of the year before: same sign, same bidding war against the same person. I retreated to the dance floor but kept an eye on TH, sitting at the table in his Cast Away wig, pecking at his phone screen. While I threw my hands in the air like I just didn’t care (I SO DID CARE), he secured our son’s future delight/my pride. After a minute, the silent auction was over and he raised his own hands in the hair and I screeched in victory.

Later, he was so awful about it: he suggested we share the sign with the other bidder as a token of goodwill and peace. BARF.

I don’t want to share, I thought. I want people to learn their lessons and pay their debts and be completely levelled by the side-eye I distribute to them on the playground for not inviting me, excuse me my child, to whatever the event-du-jour is, and this is the kind of fairness I prefer thank you very much.

Meanwhile, I sit as the recipient of a grace I don’t deserve and could never earn and I squirm uncomfortably each time this is revealed.

“UNDERSTAND ME!” The Kid yelled recently from the backseat, as I struggled to do just that. His speech is rapidly improving, but most days our 10 is still everyone else’s 5 and I hate being reminded of that–almost as much as I hate his feeling misunderstood. Because I know that feeling, that need to be comprehended and how closely it approximates (is) the need to be validated, to be accepted. How it feels so much like being loved that it can become a substitute for it. How misleading that can be, when it comes to bids and birthday parties and crusades for justice.

It’s the feeling I got while sitting beside my friend after a rough week for both of us, as Ronan Farrow talked in the Opera House about doing what’s right even if you feel all alone while doing it, and we turned to each other in glee over the unintentionally personalised message that met us where we were at that exact moment, in our own little crusade. It’s the feeling of being seen, and known. And it’s intoxicating, but it’s not always love.

Love is deeper and more profound. It’s not the guy ahead on the stage but the friend sitting adjacent. It’s the other friend, from the sofa, laughing as TK orates incessantly over our own conversation and saying, “Tell me again about how he used to not talk,” because she wasn’t around then yet somehow she was, because she is now. It’s not the lady at the outdoor market picking a jumper for me because, as she says, she “knows my style” (she does, and I buy it, but come on, she’s running a business). It’s later that day, when TH pushes an unwilling Little Brother on his bike and I have to run to keep up with TK on his, this TK who used to be just as unwilling as LB but with more reason (talk to your local occupational therapist about bilateral movement and crossing midlines and dyspraxia, thanks for coming to my TED talk about our 10 and your 5), and now he grins as he shoots around the oval that lies next to the beach, shouting, “I’m WINNING!” into the wind, the same wind that carries LB’s cries that will one day turn into shouts of their own. A minute later, TK takes a soft tumble to the ground and I cheer, telling him it’s time to celebrate his first fall because it means that he gets to jump back up from it, and he goes along with it: “Dad, I had my first fall!” Around us, similarly-aged children are riding without falling, without training wheels, and part of me wants to tell them our story, just to be understood. Another part wants to shoot them some withering side-eye and tell them I didn’t want to come to their event anyway.

And another, buried deep within where only good counselling and wine and grace can reach, sees this oval as a circle that, for now, is punctuated with falls and fives but held in all its broken places with a grace that will one day make it whole.