Thursday, September 28, 2006

I'm a bad, bad mom!!

The boy was hurt. Bad. In all our outlandish attempts to keep him safe and warm and fuzzy - he was hurt. The handsome young man who's alabaster skin had only been marred by daunting bruises and the occasional mosquito bite - now has stitches and a scar somewhere in his future.
On Monday night as we were all gathered around the television to watch a friend of a friend appear on the lastest edition of "Wife Swap", my precious little man tripped over a rug that we had lovingly placed on our tiles floors in the hopes that he wouldn't fall and break his mind. He tripped and his head landed square on the corner, the sharp pointy corner, of our coffee table. There was crying, there was blood and there was a three and a half hour wait in the emergency room. There was a horrible concoction the ER doctor tried to trick me into believing was actually a numbing agent - that made my poor child scream as if it was acid as I held it to his open wound. There were stitches - three. And then...There was calm as he proceeded to point out every "light" in the triage room we were assigned to.
Then we were released - expected to go home and put the boy to bed and wake up the next day as if none of this had occurred. As if I wasn't the worst parent in the world for not taking better care to protect him. Each time I closed my eyes that night - in an effort to get some sleep so I could face the following day - I saw it happen over and over again. It was so fast and there was nothing I could have done at that moment to save him from that corner of that stupid coffee table! Why do I even have that thing - I don't drink coffee!
Three days later he is doing fine - truth be told he was doing fine on the car ride to the hospital - Mother and Father, however - not so much. He will more than likely have a slight scar that will be hidden by hair - until the day that he decides to join a punk band and shaves his head only to discover the deep dark family secret - about the horrible fall he took at 18 months. The fall they never speak of.