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Toast is small and simple, and maybe eating a lousy piece of it doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world. Agreed. I can think of far worse things. But this isn't a book about surviving worst-case scenarios. It's about weathering the small challenges that we encounter every day. This scar that I have on my left shin might give you an idea of what I'm talking about. I got it when I was at the beach with my daughter, Emerson Rose. It was the first morning of our trip, and Emerson and I spent it playing in the sand and walking along the beach. In front of our hotel, about fifteen feet off the shore in a calm area of the ocean, there was a floating trampoline. Pretty cool, huh? I'd never seen that before. It looked like it was intended to be fun, but was it something I really wanted to do? Not so much. I didn't want to be bouncing around in front of the whole beach in my less-than-supportive bikini. Nor did I want to plunge into the deep, dark ocean to swim out to the trampoline. Wading was just fine with me. Before I was a mother, I wouldn't have gone near something like that. But I am a mother now, and I could see that Emerson was afraid, but curious. As a single mom I find myself in this situation a lot—there's some adventure that doesn't appeal to me, but there's no one I can turn to and say, 'Your turn, honey. Take Emerson out onto the trampoline.'

We swam out to the trampoline and bounced around for a while. Then Emerson wanted to jump off, but she was scared. I said, 'Oh sure, let's do it. It'll be really fun. I'll go first.' You and I both know that I did not want to jump off that trampoline. I was scared. But I don't want to teach that to her. I don't want to project my overblown imaginative worries onto her wide-eyed innocent hope. Now the thing about this floating trampoline is that it wasn't very bouncy, and what little bounce it had was weird and off-kilter, so you couldn't really plan your trajectory. But my daughter was waiting and watching, so what could I do? I flew off the trampoline into -- a huge belly flop. A belly flop looks funny. It even sounds funny. But I'm here to say: It's. Not. Funny. My stomach, my arms, my legs -- all my skin burned. I was instantly red and tender all over, but I didn't want Emerson to see that I was in serious pain. That wasn't the lesson I wanted to teach. I knew she could do it and I knew that she, unlike her aging mom, would be fine. So I popped my head out of the water and said, 'That was so fun! Give it a try.' She jumped straight off, loved it, of course, and did it again and again. When we got back to the beach, I saw that I had a long cut on my leg from the water (who knew that could happen?). Emerson noticed the blood, and I shrugged it off with some stupid excuse.

I was in agony, but I didn't want to cry in front of Emerson. Instead, I got a rum-infused coconut beverage from the guy walking down the beach and subtly iced my wound.

Excerpted from 'BURNT TOAST: And Other Philosophies of Life' by Teri Hatcher (Hyperion; May 2006)