My kids and I just got back from a brunch at my gf’s place. They know and love my gf (and vice versa) but this was their first intro to her extended family and friends. It was a full house and of course, as always, the kids stole everyone’s heart. But mine especially, when…
I was clearing the dishes from the counter when my daughter (8) asked if she could get some ice from the freezer. I said sure and continued to clean up and talk to the guest. A second later, I saw my gf sprinting across the kitchen towards the fridge immediately followed by a sudden thud. Someone had put one of those big heavy industrial cast iron wine bottle openers on top of the fridge and it toppled when my daughter opened the freezed door. I didn’t realize it at first but it had struck her quite hard on the forehead before it hit the floor. She was still holding her glass of water and smiling. My gf and I breathed a sigh of relief that she wasn’t hurt and teased her about breaking the joint which made my little girl laugh.
Over the next few minutes I noticed my baby girl milling near me and I happened to notice a red welt (turning blue) on her forehead. Her eyes were tear filled but she was smiling bravely. It dawned on me that she did get hit by that damn kitchen anchor. My knees nearly buckled because she was being so brave despite being near tears and in obvious pain. I immediately grabbed some ice and we went into a quiet corner of the house where she was able to cry a little and I consoled her and told her how brave and special she is. We cuddled for a little while and all was right in the world again.
My son(5), well, not as dramatic but, just yesterday he was sitting at the computer and playing a game, having his favourite – cold pizza and milk for lunch. He had a look of focus and determination in his eyes and his mouth was pensively chewing a bite of pizza. That moment, right there, I will never forget. My heart just stopped. He is smart, beautiful and innocent. I wished then and there that he’d never ever have to deal with some of the ugly crap that life will inevitably throw his way. Of course, I can’t protect him from most things as he grows. No more than I could have protected my little girl today. But I so wish that I could.
Kids. They break your heart in one way or another.
In December of 2003 my daughter—17 at the time—had surgery to correct a congenital defect in her jaw (sort of an uber-TMJ). She asked me to sit with her in the prep area till they were ready for her, which meant that I got to watch her walk down the corridor and out of sight. I will never forget how small she looked.
The surgery went beautifully, and she’s fine ‘n’ feisty. But it really hit me at the time that now matter how much water passes under the proverbial bridge, in your heart they never really grow up.
My Heart skipped a few beats the time I nearly broke all four fingers in my 3 year old niece’s hand.
I was frustratingly shutting the living room door as people were coming in and out, then suddenly my niece appear, a split second after I’v sent the door flying, with her fingers in the hinge gap. I don’t think I’ve ever reacted so fast in my life as I did to grab that door!
It still makes me shudder just thinking about it… Probably the same feeling my step-dad gets when He remembers the time he nearly sat on the same niece when she was one. Poor niece!
Just yesterday my sweet little 6 year old boy came out of the bathroom after drying his hair (he’s the world’s littlest metrosexual) and calmly said, “Mom, I hurt my fingers a little.” He was so calm I didn’t react much, just said “What happened?”
That’s when he told me he was trying to unplug the dryer and “got a little electrocuted” and then started to sob. Electrocuted! That just killed me! Then he told me that the middle finger hurt a little more and that, when it happened, his whole body shook a little. It just broke my heart and what was worse is he and my husband were just about to embark on a weekend of leaving mommy alone and having Easter with my in-laws. I wanted to hug him for an hour cause he was a little electrocuted.
Caricci, Speaking as someone who has electrocuted himself many times in his life - The experience is more odd than painful. Sure it’s painful. But I think weird enough to make a child more curious than hurt.
Also I think a natural response to something unusual happening in a child is to sob. I don’t think your kid was hurt, I think he doesn’t quite know how to react to what happened.
When my middle son was about 5, we were spending a lovely evening on July 4th with my parents at their house in the country. Naturally my oldest son and my brother decided to invest in some fireworks. We were back quite a distance, but one of the “running screamer”- type fireworks malfunctioned, shot across the yard, and hit middle son in the stomach. He was shocked and terrified, but barely singed because my quick thinking mother dumped an entire glass of iced tea over his head as son as it hit. He was more shaken by the episode, than hurt, and he was a little shocked at being doused with ice cold liquid in one hundred degree weather.
The heart-wrenching part came once we went inside to clean him up and check the damage. “Momma? Can you just look at it for me? And at the hole in my back?”
“What hole?” I asked.
It seemed that he was convinced that the projectile had actually shot through him and come out the other side, and he was afraid to look at the hole through his middle. I just about cried.
On my niece’s second birthday, I’d been sent upstairs with something. Suddenly, I hear the pitter patter of little feet and my name (sort of) being yelled. Then the two of us started downstairs. She squatted down, and overbalanced. There I am, almost close enough to touch her, but not quite, watching her tumble down half a flight of wooden stairs and hit a wall in that kind of slow motion that occurs in such situations.
I felt soo bad, but what could I have done? She usually goes down stairs properly- and hadn’t asked to be picked up. She was just fine, once she quit enjoying being the center of attention (she probably was in some pain, its just that she is young enough it is hard to tell sometimes how much is pain or want for something and how much was suggested by others.)
You’re right, of course—it may not always be the case, but for the vast majority the joy far outweighs the pain.
But as for you, my fine feathered friend, don’t think you’re off the hook yet! However bleak the situation may appear (and I’ve read enough to get the feeling that it’s pretty damn bleak), you never know what awaits. In my own case, I’d mentally dealt myself out of the gene pool for years. Then at 36 I (re)met someone with whom I’d previously had a pretty halfhearted relationship, we married six months later, and the aforementioned daughter came along not quite three years after that. Her sister was born another three years down the line, when I was 42.
Moral (if any) of the story: don’t count your lack of chickens before they’re hatched. Life may have a surprise or three for you yet.
Well, my youngest twin had a helluva birth, so I hope we got that all out of the way at the beginning. It would be rough to face something worse than we’ve already gone through.
When my son and his sister’s friend were playing in her room and we heard a really loud definiative Thud upstairs.
Rushing up there, the girls were standing paralyzed on the bed staring over at something.
Where the dresser that we thought was untippable ( Damn You Ikea!) and underneath it was my 4.5 year old son. I called out his name.
“Here I am, Mama. I’m ok.”
He had a non-bleeding gash just above his eyebrow that went down to the bone. He had been climbing the dresser, which is nearly as tall as I am, so he could use the top drawer as a bed. I would like to state that the top drawer is about the size of sideways shoebox.
He never cried, and my friend took our daughter and I spirited him away to the emergency clinic. He had stitches done and he never cried once during the entire procedure.
He reserves his crying for things like the Flying Dumbo Ride It is for Preschoolers and very gentle. at Disney. Maybe my son is just more sensitive to the Evil that is Di$ney.
Two recently. The first was a couple of weeks ago, when Little Case was pedaling his ride-on tractor on the asphalt path outside. He managed to push it up the slope, which we thought he couldn’t do yet, and went hurtling downwards before Missus Case could stop him - I was inside, and turned to watch helplessly through the window as he reached the bottom and crashed face-first off the tractor.
There’s that sickening, heart-stopping moment when you see the accident unfold but can’t do a thing to prevent it: I raced outside, but fortunately he’d landed on the grass, and only scraped the skin off his nose and skinned his elbows and knees {yet again}. I think the worst and best part was him seeing him struggling not to cry and stoutly insisting “I’m not hurt. I’m OK.”
The second was last night: he was making a nuisance of himself shouting and stamping and playing with my books in the living room when he should have been asleep, until I finally lost patience and snapped “Oh, go to bed.” He meekly disappeared into his room, and was quiet in there until I heard some loud sniffs.
I went in to see him sitting in the middle of his bed, utterly disconsolate and struggling not to cry, and I felt like the biggest shit on earth. I cuddled him and apologised for snapping, and he replied through his sniffs “Sorry for being a big nuisance”, and I felt like crying myself. We curled up together under his duvet: he was asleep in five minutes, and I just stayed there holding him and hearing him breathe.
Shortly after her 14th birthday, The Teenaged Terror came in and plopped down on the other end of the couch where I was watching TV. I said something to her, she said something to me and we started watching. About a minute later, something made me look at her and she had tears running down her face.
I said, “What’s wrong, kiddo?” and she looked at me with an expression on her face that I can’t begin to describe and said, “My dad is such a shit.” I put an arm around her and hugged her, got a shoulder full of tears for a moment, then she kinda snuggled in and went to sleep. I held her for over an hour, until my fingers had long since turned blue and my arm was cramping.
I never did find out what caused the tears, but I sure as hell am glad that I was there to provide the shoulder and the hug. (And FWIW, her dad really is a shit.)
I was much younger, and watching two little girls, and one fell off the side of the staircase (no guard railing) and hit her head on the floor. I had a hysteria attack, even after the mother assured me it was okay and that she would be fine and it wasn’t my fault. To this day I still can’t remember the details, it hurts too much to think about it.
There was the day I got a call from Dweezil’s school that he’d fallen and broken his arm on the playground, and the bone was sticking out :eek:
I got to the hospital before the ambulance did. When they wheeled Dweezil in, he was a little teary but not hysterical. He was clearly in pain. But he asked me to kiss his arm and make it feel better.
Sooner or later, every kid learns that kissing doesn’t make everything better. That’s a heartbreaking lesson.
I am hopelessly in love with my best friend’s 3-year-old son, and have been since the day he came home. Luckily for me, the feeling is mutual. The little guy has always been told “I love you” on a regular basis by both his parents and me, but now he’s starting to get the concept and will say it back. A few weeks ago I was hanging out at their place, and was dragged downstairs to play with him (as usual): I hunkered down next to his play table, and he started to walk over to get one of his trains … then suddenly, mid-step, he turned on his heel, walked back over to me, said “I love you, Aunt Jenny” and gave me a big hug (with a few extra seconds of his head on my shoulder and all).
Oh. my. god.
It was the first time he’d done that – just spontaneously told me he loved me – and it took me a second to be able to reply to him. Later, when I told my friend about it, I thought I was going to cry! Watching this kid grow up is amazing … there have been several moments like this already, and I know there are so many more to come.
Our son is a terrific young man. He’s a genuine good person, kind, helpful, well mannered, hard working, fun loving, good humored, athletic, geeky, goofy kid. He’s not perfect. (Clean your room and bathroom please. When you are sleeping in the guest room because your room is so messy, that’s a clue it’s time.)
He had the credits to graduate from high school early but elected to stay in school taking honors classes his senior year to play another year on his water polo team that had a very good chance of winning the state championship. Three days before the state championship tournament was to begin he was blind assaulted at school. His eye was injured so badly that he missed a few days of school while under the doctors care and of course he wasn’t allowed to play. The coach filled his spot with a younger player to take a full roster and took him along as a team manager. The look on his face as all these kids were gathering and boarding the bus and in the few photographs we have seen taken that tournament weekend are heart wrenching. You can see on his face underneath a stoic camera smile how heart broken he was to not be able to play. The team placed third instead of first as expected and in the shot with the banner for the natatorium you can tell he’s terribly uncomfortable just being in the photo since he didn’t get to play. He is not a top ranked player, more in the middle to bottom range of the roster at his school, so it wasn’t that he or anyone else thought they would do better with him on the team, just the disappointment of having to be left out of the pinnacle event of the year for his sport.
Yesterday his date turned him down for prom. He’s been wanting to ask her out for a couple of years, but she moved across town and they rarely bump into each other anymore socially. He waited too late to ask her partly working up nerve, partly getting ahold of her number was harder than he thought it would be and partly because she had a different week spring break and was away for a week and she had plans her parents wouldn’t let her change. But I knew from the sound of his voice on the call and the way he kept saying, “It’s ok. I understand. No, I know I waited too late. Don’t worry about it.” and so on that he was extremely disappointed. He had earned the money for the prom tickets ($120.00 :eek: ) by doing some extra difficult landscaping, hauling dirt, moving rocks, and cutting trees for us and handed me back the money for the tickets telling me he wouldn’t be needing it after all.
Really on the life scale these are not the worst things he and we’ve had happen, but they were heart wrenching nonetheless because of the way he worked to hide his disappointment and not ruin the others fun or have anyone worry about him.
AbbySthrnAccent,
If my older daughter ever breaks up with her boyfriend, I’ll give you a call. Maybe your son will still be available. Come to think of it, if he’s still around in a couple of years, I have a younger daughter, too. She’ll be old enough by then.
thirdwarning thanks for the compliment. He’s still quite girl shy. Good looking and fit and smart as he is you’d think he’d be more confident, but he is so used to running in his usual crew where they all sort of think of him “as a brother or a cousin” he finds it hard to ask a young lady out. I think part of it is that he’s never really had to worry much about asking. The girls in this crowd do things like get the boys together and say, “ok were going to the homecoming dance as friends, P you are taking J, A you take M, L you take B. We’ll make dinner at J’s house. Then we’ll go to B’s house and let parents take pictures. L will drive his parents new van so we can all ride together. We’ll go over to A’s house for dessert and his game room after.” and so on. These girls just lay it all out what they want. This time he wanted to ask a young lady that all these kids know, but she had moved away before they were old enough to do these kinds of group activities, so the ball was sort of in his court to get her included. Even though I told him he needed to give a girl a month or so notice for a big thing like senior prom, I think time got away from him while he worked up the nerve and it never registered with him that it was just in a couple of weeks. Time flys and all that.
monica He’s 18. I think he’s the bees knees. Last night over dinner he said that during lunch a girl mentioned she didn’t have a prom date. He thought it was just conversation and told her that his plans had fallen through and he wasn’t going either. Then after lunch his best buddy thwacked him upside the back of he head and called him clueless for not realizing she was hinting to be asked. Deadline to buy the tickets was during lunchtime yesterday so the opportunity passed by the time someone pointed out he’d missed the hint. He made light of it by saying that he wanted to go with M and wasn’t interested in the expense if it wasn’t her anyway, but I do think he was a tad embarrassed that he didn’t catch on even though he laughed about it and told it as an amusing story over dinner.
There was a movie with Julia Roberts years ago where she played a step mom that planted a model/actor to chat up her step daughter after school. On the way in this morning I was having a Julia Roberts fantasy Not THAT kind of fantasy! wishing a young lady would just come right out and say TeenSthrnAccent I’ve had a crush on you forever, will you be my date for prom? Of course this being real life and not the movies, it’s not going to happen; but I did get a chuckle out of imagining the look on his face, the boost to his confidence and the shades of red as he blushed and accepted.
Next up is figuring out how to distract him on that night when his friends are all otherwise occupied. I know going to the movies with the 'rents is a sorry subsitution for a pretty browneyed girl and all your friends dressed to the nines, so I’ve got to come up with something better than that. Going golfing with dadsthrnaccent or to the lake and having a ski and some wakeboard jumps cures almost all disappointments, but being an evening event, that won’t work. Football is out of season, Rockets are away but the Astros are in town. So I guess I’ll check on that.
But I so wish that I could.
