All I Want for Christmas...

Posted September 24, 2007

3 |

I found this helpful Thank You! Your vote will be tallied soon!

^{Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.}

Birdy is crying and crying. "Owww!" she sobs tearlessly, "Yowwwwwch!" and we say, "Wow, that must have really hurt!" We're not exactly leaping out of bed, though. I mean, it doubtless hurts a very great deal to bang your finger on a doll. It kills! Or at least it sure seems to. And Baby Chunky isn't exactly the softest doll, it's true, what with her molded newborn oversized head and grimace, just waiting to passively attack her human caretakers; she does have a little something of the Pod People about her, that doll. But this seems like a comfort-from-
under-the-comforter situation, sans alarm, even though Birdy holds up the injured pinky, sniffles, and says, "Ice pack?"

Maybe it's all the more comical somehow because just yesterday I was holding Ben in my arms, holding a paper towel to his face -- a paper towel that was already soaked with blood from the moment it touched his mouth, the blood that was everywhere and dripping on my pants and mixing with Ben's saliva into a pink stream of spit and blood and also leaking from one of his nostrils.

I had been juicing limes for a marinade, chatting with a friend who was here to pick up her daughters. They and Ben were out in the hammock, playing the usual lunatic swinging game that I can never bring myself to watch but must endure, because Extreme Hammocking is my cross to bear. And then suddenly there was Ben with a hand up to his face, slurring, "I lost my tooth." Which made good sense, because that tooth had been hanging on by a thread, by the grace of God, by our collective hallucination, because how could it possibly hang on for so long? Only it did, giving Ben a little bit of a drunken sailor look to him, like maybe he'd been in a bar fight in some port city somewhere. But this was only a momentary presumption, about the loose tooth, because at exactly the same time that I was noticing the blood, noticing that Ben was white as a sheet, he was saying, "My other tooth."

An accident! Understanding was dawning only very slowly. I held Ben in my lap, and just like one of those ads for Mexico or Club Med, the ones that implore you to "Fall in love all over again!" I fell in love with him all over again. He was shaking and bleeding, but too busy comforting his friend's sister -- who had been pushing the hammock -- to cry or complain. "Itsh weawy not your fault," he slurred, and this was absolutely the truth: "That was bound to happen" is the understatement the year.

But something went awry with my own coping mechanism. Which is to say that I blacked out. Or maybe what I did was grey out. I was suddenly slick with sweat and sick to my stomach and not quite able to see anything. Which was surprising, not only because I think of myself as a closet coper, but also because I had no doubt that Ben was fundamentally okay. "Here, honey," I said to Ben and handed him to Michael. "Sit with Daddy for a minute." While I press my cheek to the cold linoleum of the bathroom floor and try not to vomit. Who knew I was such a wuss? I mean, you did, but I thought I was secretly quite brave. I held Birdy, newborn, while they tested her sweat for cystic fibrosis; I rode in an ambulance once with Ben while he hyperventilated from stomach pain; I smiled reassuringly at him when he was 3 and they scanned his bones for suspected tumors; I have, as has been well documented here, been barfed on with both frequency and ferocity; I am always cheerful and fine when the phlebotomist approaches. But lots of blood? I guess I am so secretly brave as to be, um, undetectably brave.

"Honey," Michael said, when I finally made it palely back out from the bathroom. "Could you look at his gums for a second?" And I had to say, "You know what? I actually can't look at his gums." Because now I need to return to the bathroom and press my cheek to the cold linoleum because you said the word "gums" to me. So Michael brought him to our pediatrician who works just up the street from us, and she predicted that Ben would be absolutely fine, especially after his other tooth fell out, which happened approximately 10 seconds later.

Sure, he was bloody and bruised and swollen, but Ben is a silver-lining kind of a guy. "Wow!" he said. "I wonder what the tooth fairy bringth for lothing two teeth!" He is suddenly very Cindy Brady, complete with the retro good nature. "Wow!" he said this morning, upon waking. "Three Thacagawea dollars! One ecthtra for the acthident, I gueth!"

Poor Birdy is recovering only slowly from her doll injury, lying with her ice pack, groaning forlornly. But I can't stop staring at her brother. When Ben catches my eye, raises his eyebrows at me, and smiles his gappy, toothless smile, it feels like the end of an era.

Member Comments On...

All I Want for Christmas...

3 Comments

Create / Edit your profile

keagyquinn says:

September 29, 2007

I thought of you the other night when my son was barfing all over his bed for the 3rd time. I was thinking about your comment on how we show up when our kids need us. There always comes a point in the clean-up process that I have to stop thinking about what I am doing or I will be sick myself. And it's hard to reassure your child with your own head over the toilet.

But anyway, I love your columns. I've read and re-read "Waiting for Birdy" many times. There are certain chapters that I go back to depending on my mood.

Not Acceptable

savandliamsmom says:

September 28, 2007

I hear your stories of childs barf and blood and all nighters and just hope that I handle it half as well as you do. And while I am slightly jealous of the bravery you do posess, I LOVE reading about it!

Not Acceptable

JenniferNiesslein says:

September 28, 2007

Ooh, I am jealous. Not about the blood or the super-secret bravery, but Caleb will be nine years old in two weeks and he still has all but two of his baby teeth.

I have this image of him as a man with stubble on his face and those tiny, tiny teeth. Hey! Like Phil Collins!

Not Acceptable

Family

Account Warning

Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

All I Want for Christmas...

Member Comments On...