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I took my 6-month-old daughter on a camping trip in the French Caribbean with my parents. Her first solid food was gumming on a baguette. Her second was Belgian chocolate. We slept on the beach. Correction: She slept on the beach. Her tiny body in the middle of the air mattress. My huge body curled over the edge of the mattress so I wouldn’t crush her, watching her all night, listening to beach party sounds traveling in the curl of the breakers.

She cooed and gurgled through the trip. Her short fat legs waved like palm fronds in the breeze. She absorbed the warmth of the air, the flower smells, the sounds of tree frogs and crashing waves. She can’t remember any of it, but she has a foundation of joy. I remember a lot of it, and it gives me a bulwark of appreciation.

There are now so many wrongs incorporated in that recollection. Who puts a 6-month-old at risk by traveling? We have global warming as a result of pleasure-jetting around. I am aware of colonialism. I don’t eat white flour. I don’t eat flour. It’s against the law to sleep with an infant. We’re in a wicked pandemic, also brought on by “globalism.” And who feeds an infant chocolate?

I’m sorry. I throw myself prostrate at your mercy. I didn’t know. I didn’t think.

But I’m secretly glad we got away with it. My daughter loved the trip. I loved the trip. My parents, who invited us both, never regretted the trip. In fact, it was the start of the happiest period of their lives. We would never do it now.

There are a lot of those never-do-it-nows: As kids, my siblings and I rode around in the back of a Jeep pick-up truck all the time. Once we drove all the way to Chicago, taking turns two of us at a time, lying on a mattress in the bed of the truck. Passing cars only saw four legs and sneakers waving in the wind. I shake my greying head thinking of those decisions. It was OK back then; it is so not OK now.

The world is paying for our folly. I’ve been in isolation for six months in northern Vermont with the same daughter and my husband. I am putting my life at risk by going to the grocery store. I read with horror of the people on the west coast fleeing before a 100-foot wall of fire. These are the consequences of our foolishness. On a deep level I am truly repentant.

On a shallow level I’m giving my daughter for her 43rd birthday a bar of Belgian chocolate.