Watching My Son Was Painful But Now I Understand “Grit”

To be gritty is to keep putting one foot in front of the other…To be gritty is to fall down seven times, and rise eight.  Angela Duckworth*                                                                                                                

I stood on the freezing snow at the bottom of the race course among the throng of other parents.  My boy was due to come down any moment, navigating a course of red and blue gates set on a hill of shear ice.

All I wanted to do was look away.

To...