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Wednesday, May 12, 2004

my poor little princess

If you need something to distract you from the fact that you have a zillion things to do before your husband gets home in five minutes, having your precious darling daughter injure herself in a most disconcerting way can prove very effective. However, I doubt it's worth it. You know how our mothers always told us not to play with sticks in our mouths? And now we tell our children the same thing? And you know how sometimes kids just don't pay attention and they have to learn things the hard way? Yeah. My poor baby girl has a deepish laceration just forward of her right tonsil about the size of my pinky fingernail. It makes me choke up just thinking about it -- and about how much worse it could have been.


This was C's first emergency room visit, and I think initially the fear about that was worse than the pain. Now the pain has surpassed that pretty thoroughly, however. And now I'm facing another episode of the hardest part of motherhood -- which isn't sleepless nights or stressful days or even watching my children grow up and away from me; it's watching my child suffer and not being able to do a single thing to make it better. Right now she's asleep, but I know that before long she'll wake up in pain and cry and the crying will make it worse and that'll make her cry more, and I'll hold her and cry because I can't help her. And this should go on for probably two weeks or so. This all makes the rest of the problems I was whining about today look pretty stupid.
And her poor brother, who was partly responsible for the accident, was just horrified at what he did to his beloved sister. And I feel a huge load of Mom-guilt even though moms around the world have to take their eyes off their kids periodically and it's not my fault, right? Tell that to good old Nameless Dread, which at least has a name tonight.

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