Yesterday I ripped my contact in half and removed half my contact from my eye. Then our bed broke. Then, today, I took the boys and the dog for a walk around a lake. As we walked, and the dog strained at her leash, the boys posed questions to me that all required immediate answers, which then inspired other questions. Their goal, it seemed to me, was to force me into an insupportable answer, or to concede that my rule-making was essentially arbitrary, or to become a tyrant. Can I throw a stone in the lake? You may. Can my brother? He may. Can we destroy lily pads with our stones? I think so. If we can destroy one or two lily pads with our little stones, may we now heft enormous boulders into the lake? May we heft four or five apiece? No, you may only throw one more, each. Fine, two more. Now you may never throw another rock in the lake again.

Tyrant. At the optometrist’s office, after we left the lake, the doctor dyed my eye yellow, and turned my eyelid inside out. I had stared, since I broke the contact, at my own eyeball for fifteen minutes at a time, trying to locate the clear scrap that was causing me so much pain. It was hidden from me, and only the doctor's methodical searching, his light, the thing that you rest your head in to immobilize it, this dye, was able to discover it. When he did, what relief I felt! But even as relief flowed through me, I had questions for the doctor.