Why I should never be left alone with anyone under the age of eighteen.
April 28, 2004Sigh. So, okay. Here’s what happened.
Yesterday, shortly after dinner. Henry was in dreamy, reflective mode, standing up on the window seat in our living room, gazing at the cars and flotsam. This is a narrow seat that he’s never left alone on, as he could immediately slip and fall, causing grave injury to his person. (Note the foreshadowing! NOTE IT!)
Anyway, I was of course sitting right there, right next to him, my legs stretched out across the seat as he pressed his body against the window. He was absentmindedly kissing the window and he was being so cute and so unusually still that I grabbed the camera off the coffee table and started taking pictures. Of course, while clicking away, I let go of him. And then. Then. He looked at the camera, grinned, shouted “Boom!” which is his way of saying, “Watch me comically throw myself down!” and—boom—he threw himself down. Only his butt landed on nothing--remember how I said how narrow the seat was? Remember?—because his butt was headed straight for the floor, but before his butt could reach its destination, his poor little skull cracked against the brutal coffee table edge, and OH MY GOD WHO TOLD ME I COULD HAVE A KID?
For a millisecond he lay there, staring up at me like, why am I down here, wasn’t I up there? and in that millisecond I thought, he’s not making a sound, he’s a vegetable, his brain has been pureed and then he started wailing, and I scooped him up and tried to comfort him as only an idiot-mother can, and I tried to figure out what to do and I couldn’t remember a damn thing, including my husband’s cell phone number, and all I could do was babble idiot words of idiot comfort to my poor trusting child. Miraculously, after ten minutes of unadulterated weeping he wiped his eyes and asked to read a book, so of course we did, me quizzing him on the name of every animal on every page, as if he might have lost the giraffe-identifying lobe of his brain.
So, in the end, everything was fine, Henry’s fine, we’re fine, tra la la. There’s not even a bump on his head. Everything’s fine, except I’M NOT FINE, I’m a total wreck still. I’m having flashbacks of the feeling of his little legs landing on my legs and then slipping away from me, stupid me with my stupid camera; I’m still watching him slip off me and I’m not reaching forward and dropping the goddamn camera and I hate myself. And the worst part is, I have a picture of that big grin he had on his face, the joyful get-a-load-of-this grin he gave me, one second before he discovered that his mother sucks.
On an unrelated topic, while searching the web for a good brain chart to link to, I found the kitty paintings of a schizophrenic artist. First the kitties are weird and THEN THEY’RE SO MUCH WEIRDER. Go see. I don’t know, though—I think the psycho kitties are less frightening than the “normal period” kitties. What does that say about me?
Reader Comments (24)
2. I think the psycho kitties are less frightening than the “normal period” kitties. What does that say about me?Umm, that you're just like me? But that is probably mighty cold comfort. Believe me, you never, ever asked to be like me. Stage 3 looks exactly like a Tibetan god.
Does this mean artists aren't artists until they are schizo?
He's fine. He likes to draw cats that look like Jimi Hendrix, but all toddlers go through that hallucinatory phase right?
Henry is fine. You'll be fine. Shush. There there. Pat pat...
==============================Note in my comment to me:Schizo Cat Stage #5 looks exactly like my living room rug. Seriously.
just wait till he asks to ride his bike off the roof into the pool.
or a skateboard off a stair well.
or maybe that was something only my friends did.
my advice, invest in a good health plan.
He landed on a padded footstool that was placed just like it was meant to be there, and the 2 seconds of eternity-slo-mo time that it took me to reach him was agonizing, only to find him lying there looking straight up at me like you said, "WTF? I was up there, now I'm down here." I swear if he hadn't seen me just then, he wouldn't have cried, but the look on my face must have triggered the wail.
This was 6 years ago, and I can still remember every second.
God. I can only imagine the horror you must have felt. Did I tell you that I hit my daughter's head against the edge of the kitchen cabinet when I was removing her from her very first bath? My daughter's poor, delicate, fontanelled head. I think these pains we accidentally cause or allow to happen to our kids are the universal guilt pains of motherhood. (call Hallmark! stick that on a coffee mug!)
Of course, the kid was okay. It's way scarier to witness than to actually have it happen to yourself, I figure.
Both sets of cat pictures have their own joys, but the psycho ones would make way better tattoos.
(All this because I don't favor cat art.)
interesting
She had to run downstairs to get some laundry, etc. from the basement, so G put Rachel in the exer-saucer thingie, which amuses her and (more importantly for our purposes) confines her to a single, baby-safe locale.
Or so she thought.
Seems Rachel has been watching closely, and managed to climb *up* out of the exersaucer (using a nearby table leg for the vertical assist), *stand* (sort of) on the lip of said exersaucer (with the toys and the nice mirror and other things that are not! for standing on! at all!)
I really attribute malice to this last part. I know my daughter, and yes, she is this clever.
She waited for G to be at the top of the stairs. In visual range, but way too far away to do anything effective... and then executed a perfect triple-lindy face plant.
The subtext being: "Wow, where'd you get your parenting license? Cracker-Jacks Box?"
She's okay. And G's started to listen more seriously my suggestions re the use of super-glue as parenting aid.
--FD
Last week it was - mom goes to sleep, mom is rudely awakened by sickening thump and long, LOUD silence before blood-curdling scream issues from baby who is suddenly on the floor amid daddy's unwashed laundry.
Mom teleports off the bed and over to the other side of the bed to scoop poor terrified wailing probably-broken-arms-and-legs baby into her arms and whisper "Oh, oh oh..."
No bump. No bruise. Ten minutes and a bit of apple juice later, she's fine. Will probably live to crawl off the bed many many times.
Whilst eating at the dinner table as a toddler, stood up in our high-backed dining room chair and proceeded to fall over backward and clonk head loudly and horrendously on our tile floor - said chair was right in betwixt of mommy and daddy who watched in slow motion horror and could do nothing. Screams from all, much cradling and angst, he was fine.
Age three or so, FIRST time left overnight with grandmother (or anyone else for that matter), he was crawling across her glass dinette table and it tipped - he crashed to floor and glass crashed all around him. She took him to ER for stitches on his head and face. We were out of town at a friends wedding having a drunken blast. I was then traumatized about leaving him anywhere.For all of about two months. ((Now I'm like, go play outside and quit buggin!))
As a 4 yr old, he was making a bridge from couch to coffe table repeatedly with a couch cushion. Mommy, walking by, said stop that, you will get hurt. He did it again, the cushion slipped and he face-planted: the bridge of his nose against hard mosaic-tiled edge of yon coffee table - lots of blood and screaming, only a slight scar now.
May the force of self forgiveness be with you - and all parents ;)
Hello - I am reading your archives from THE VERY START!! This post made me laugh loudly and snort tea out of my nose. This is why I am not - nor will I ever be - a mother to anything other than a cat.