There are any number of reasons why I will never be crowned Mother of the Year, but the truth is, I removed myself from the running early on.
When the children were babies Mr. Wonderful worked nights. As a result, I spent many long, hot, afternoons sitting alone with them in the yard, playing in the sandbox and biding our time until the fireflies arrived.
It was just such an afternoon when I had finally had enough of walking around a cooler full of beverages and beer left by friends after a picnic.
Fed up with our yard resembling a frat party, I prepared to throw it away.
Help
Our son, at the time, was 3. Three is the “I help you!” age. No sooner had I turned to grab a trash can to dispose of the unopened beer bottles, than I heard him offer to help.
Even as my lips formed an emphatic “no,” a cataclysmic pop and spray of foamy liquid and glass exploded around us.
Moments later, standing amongst the rivulets of beer and broken glass, I turned to see my son, white faced, mouth agape. A single shard of brown glass protruded from his chest. I think I stopped breathing.
I had no idea if the glass was a tiny fragment or many inches long. I recalled enough rudimentary first aid to know not to remove the glass myself.
My brain went on autopilot.
I moved purposefully, scooping up my infant daughter in one arm, my sobbing son in the other, and remembering quite clearly that I would need my purse.
I recall thinking that I was actually handling it rather well and that it wasn’t something I hoped to get particularly good at.
Calm
Arriving in the emergency room, my son was whisked into triage. Left behind, I balanced my daughter on my lap to complete the necessary paperwork and surprised myself by maintaining the veneer of capable calm: “Why yes, I do have my insurance card right here, thank you.”
I managed this amazing feat right up until the moment I heard my husband’s voice.
Fell apart
As he stepped through the doors of the emergency room, having come straight from work, as if on cue, I fell completely apart.
My whole body shook, tears flowed freely, and the woman behind the desk reached across and deftly removed my daughter from my lap. It was sweet of her to let me have my breakdown in peace.
Engaged in brutally berating myself, I expressed amazement that the hospital didn’t have some sort of authority investigating me. I had just brought a child reeking of alcohol into the emergency room.
His baby sister, sticky with sand, resembled a poster child for an international relief fund. “Just the cost of a cup of coffee could provide little Kassie with clean running water in order to bathe …”
I would have investigated me.
Waving away my angst, an exceedingly kind nurse snorted and said, “Honey, if you’d cleaned him up, that would have been suspicious. No one ever looks all that spiffy by the time they get to us.”
He was fine
We were soon assured that our son was fine. The glass was merely a sliver and left only a very minor cut requiring three small stitches.
Just enough to warrant a spaceman bandage, a lollipop and an attending physician more amused at my “classic mommy overreaction” than anything.
It really didn’t help. There are no lollipops or cartoon bandages that can completely assuage the pain of malignant mommy-guilt. The “what-ifs” can fell you even when reality is blessedly tame.
Still, I gamely tried out every parental platitude at my disposal. I had only turned my back for a second. I was right there the entire time. It happened so fast. Still, the truth was that our child had been harmed on my watch.
There would be a scar. It had taken me just three years to turn an otherwise mint-condition human being into a scratch and dent special. I had no deniability now.
Believe
The Great Exploding Bottle Debacle (I try to leave the word “beer” out whenever possible) has become family lore. We would later learn that the overheated alcohol, under pressure in sealed bottles, likely sparked an explosion the instant our son bumped a single bottle.
We would later find pieces of glass up to six feet away, yet our infant daughter seated nearby and our son’s face and eyes were blessedly unscathed. Do I believe in Guardian Angels? You know I do.
Our son is 12 now, tan and strong. Only the tiny bug-shaped scar (it makes him look tough) remains.
It serves as a both a horrible warning and a not-so-gentle reminder of what has come to be known as the time our 3-year-old couldn’t hold his liquor.
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