Living on the Edge

Why is it, just when you are ready to send your preschooler away to boarding school, something happens that makes you grateful for each and every minute you have with him?

So, yesterday Nathan, my mom, and I went downtown to Union Station to pick up my packet for this 5K that I did today. (More on the 5K tomorrow.) Anyway, we decided to make a day out of the trip and hang out downtown. We went to the Navy Pier Children's Museum.

While at the museum, Nathan and a larger girl, about 8 years old, had a head-on collision when they both ran around a blind corner. Since the girl was quite a bit older, he hit about her shoulder, which you wouldn't think would do that much damage. But after a brief moment of crying, Nathan sort of passed out on the floor, his eyes rolled back, and he peed on himself. (The peeing not being a major indicator of distress in and of itself, because, you know, he's three.) Somebody yelled, "Call 911!" and the rest was kind of a blur.

Fortunately Nathan came to almost immediately. He may not have lost consciousness at all. He seemed perfectly alert and coherent. We took an ambulance to Children's Memorial Hospital, where eventually several doctors proclaimed him perfectly fine. We had to stay for three hours for observation, during which time Nathan watched the hospital's continuous loop of children's DVDs and my mom and I played Angry Birds on our cell phones until the batteries died.

The doctor said that Nathan probably had a mild concussion, but nothing to warrant any follow-up medical care.

We were told to look out for any signs of further danger, such as Nathan being sleepy, having difficulty going to sleep, or acting goofy. Which pretty much sums up a day in the life of a three-year-old.

Finally we were released around 6:00, and we took a long, two-train trek back home. And all I could think was, "I don't care if he's naughty. I don't care if I spoil him. I don't care if nobody else thinks so, but he's the most perfect child in the whole world."

I also thought, "I'm never letting him out of the house again. I'm wrapping him in bubble wrap and keeping him indoors for the rest of his life."

Between Thursday's ridiculous school behavior and Friday's medical crisis, I think I experienced the full range of human emotion in a 48-hour period. And as much as I felt that maternal drive to do anything, anything to protect my child, I also felt frustration at how much motherhood leaves you exposed to such raw emotion. Once you have a child, you stick your heart out there to be battered and bruised, and soothed and warmed, to points almost beyond human tolerance. You are always living on the edge.

I didn't fully break down until the end of the hospital experience. When you're in the middle of the crisis, you move as if on auto-pilot. You think nothing. You just do what you have to do, and then you look up and it's like, "Wait, how did we get here?"

And even though I did let my mind go to some pretty dark places during the whole event, it wasn't until after it was all over that I realized how horribly things could have gone, and how lucky we were to be taking home a healthy child at the end of the evening. And I held his little head and breathed in his scent and said, tearfully, "Mommy doesn't know what she would do if anything ever happened to you."

Of course I let him sleep in my bed last night. Of course I no longer cared that he can't really stay in his own bed for a full night. I would have agreed to having him strapped to me 24/7 at that point.

By this morning, he was back to his usual shenanigans, which meant I was back to my usual frustrations. There's something in our brains that suppresses that constant, on-the-edge feeling that your child is always in imminent danger, and you go back to your day-to-day sweating the small stuff. This loss of perspective is really too bad, but we can't focus on the terrifying big things all the time. It's scary living on the edge.