Safety is in the eye of the beholder

Happy Mothers day!  I hope everyone had such a nice day like I did.  K drew me a picture.  He has discovered art and is now bringing home pictures almost every day.  Mostly circles, but a few he claims are hearts.  R made me jam in her class and embroidered a heart for the top.  I was so amazed by this because I knew it would never fly in the USA.

Just think for a moment, what making jam all entails.  The teacher bought a ton of strawberries (they are in season right now and super cheap and yummy).  Then she handed the kids knives and had them chop the strawberries.  She brought in a portable stove top burner and had the kids cook the strawberries down in the classroom.  She handed them sharp, pointy needles to sew with.  No one came home with their fingers missing or stabbed and no one got burned.  Because the mindset here is that you teach the kids how to respect and properly use knives and stoves and they won’t hurt themselves.

Because safety is how you view the world.  We left Arizona and a world of scorpions and rattlesnakes behind.  For Germany with mosquitoes, ticks and wasps.  That is like a trade off of venom for lyme disease and Valley fever.  Never been stung by a scorpion in 25 years of living in the desert.  K got stung by 2 wasps last summer.  Can I really claim that it’s safer?

I’ve been watching the news in the USA lately.  I’m so sad by all the gun shootings in schools.  And I keep thinking to myself, thank goodness the schools in Germany are safer.  HOWEVER.  I just moved to a country full of bombs.  Yup.  You read that right.  Every time a new building goes up, railway is laid, or subway built, the construction company must scan the ground for unexploded bombs.  Last summer authorities found 22 unexploded devises in the Elbe river alone.   WW2 lives on in a country were up to 10% of the ammo dropped didn’t go off and is still found every week, 70 years later.  Can I really claim that it’s safer?

Safety is in the eye of the beholder.  All we can do is try our best, protect our families and focus on the positives.   There is no one right path to take, it’s an individual journey.  And right now, my journey is sweetened by some strawberry jam my daughter made for me in school.