“This is why mothers don’t sleep”

Vanessa Bryant’s nightmare

BY HENRY ABBOTT

My job as a parent volunteer at today’s school fundraiser was to belay children at the rock climbing gym. It meant about three hours of holding and working ropes that ran from me up to the high ceiling, and then down to grunting middle-schoolers and high-schoolers. Most are novice. They fall off the rock often, so wrapped in love and trust that as their fingers slip, they mostly laugh. Of course it will all be fine—a wonderful thing for a child to feel in her bones. 

And a big bet on the adults. I was looking up at my climbing 16-year-old daughter when I first learned Kobe Bryant might have died. My 13-year-old son was climbing when I learned that Kobe’s 13-year-old daughter might have been in the helicopter with her father.

Nightmare. Nightmare. 

You tie the big careful knot that connects the child’s harness to the rope, and then you tie the backup to that knot a few inches further up. If the harness is too loose or isn’t high enough over the hip bone, a person could slip…