How Do You Unblock A | Tear Duct |top|

“No reason,” I say. “They’re just very beautiful.”

She held up her scratched palm. “Mama. Hurt.” how do you unblock a tear duct

And I realized: she had learned to feel pain without weeping from the broken side. She had simply rerouted. Her body had built a workaround while I was busy trying to demolish the dam. “No reason,” I say

He didn’t describe the sound. The tiny, wet pop of an infant’s anatomy yielding to steel. He didn’t describe the sound

I named her Liora, which means “my light.” It felt cruelly ironic those first few weeks. While other parents soothed their wailing infants, I found myself staring into Liora’s left eye, where a persistent, pearl-like crust had begun to form. A sticky, amber seal that glued her lashes together every morning. The doctor dabbed at it with a warm cloth and said, “Blocked tear duct. Very common. Ninety percent clear up by their first birthday.”

A balloon. In my one-year-old’s tear duct. Inflated to stretch the scar tissue. Because I had massaged and probed and compressed my way into making everything worse.