Angels Over My Angels

I’m a catastrophist with a vivid imagination.  This means that when I began driving, at age 30, I kept picturing myself mangled in a gory episode of vehicular carnage - like something you’d find in that Troy McClure driver’s ed film on The Simpsons.  

When my children were born and I assumed full responsibility for tiny, helpless beings that I loved more than I had loved anything previously, I had similar visions of disaster.  Would I drop them?  Roll over on Mr. R if we co-slept?  Would I turn my back at the grocery store and find Lady A in her stroller gone? 

Those fears were not relieved by anything I read.  In fact, most parenting material just made things worse.  Much worse.  Parenting magazine has a monthly feature called “It Happened to Me” that details horrible accidents, such as a child dumping a cup of boiling water  (placed near her by the server) on her lap at a restaurant or a baby rolling off the lap of a sleeping parent.  

The very helpful book Super Baby Food not only gives a Bible worth of tips for healthy eating and saving money, but also brings every disaster lurking in your home into the clearest focus possible.  And let’s not begin to discuss the omnipresent babyproofing industry.  Since forewarned is forearmed, all this information is meant to do parents a service. Except for the fact that while some accidents are preventable, others happen the second we turn our attention away, or result from the most seemingly harmless of actions.  

So much is entirely beyond control. 

Our children have certainly given us a greater familiarity with mishaps.  Some have ended in momentary pain, like a head bumped on the corner of a table because the corner covers were (thanks, kids!) recreationally removed.  Others have created more lasting and visible injury, such as when Mr. R initiated a very unstable hug that caused him and his dear friend to fall into a coffee table.  Mr. R ended up with a big goose egg on the outer corner of his right eye.  And then there are the events that required a trip to the E.R., such when during X-reme Horseplay (after bath and before bed), Mr. R slammed Lady A's right pinky finger in a bedroom door. The last two incidents were almost cinematically foreshadowed.  Unfortunately, J and I were powerless, or just too slow, to act.

But what about the times when the momentum of an accident is stopped in its tracks? 

A few weeks ago between the end of a morning birthday party and lunch, I was rushing to buy Lady A some desperately needed shoes.  I lifted Mr. R from his carseat on the street side and instructed him to stand near me on the sidewalk as I removed Lady A from hers.  I was just about to slam the rear passenger side door when something told me to check first.  

Mr. R’s fingers were in the little space between the two side doors!  

I screamed, more like barked, at him, “Don’t you ever put your fingers there again!  I could have smashed your little fingers right up.”  He began to whimper at my explosion, his little lower lip quivering.  I felt horrible and bent down and hugged him.  I apologized, explaining in kiddoese how scared I was that I could have hurt him very badly.  That we might have had to go to the hospital.  That I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself. We made a plan that next time he’d either sit in the front seat or wait close by me on the sidewalk.  For the rest of the afternoon whenever I thought of what might have happened I almost threw up.

Naturally, this isn’t our only incident like this, but it has left the strongest impression.  How did I know not to slam that door, something that in most circumstances I would have done automatically?  Was it luck?  Common sense?  Or was it something more divine or extra-sensory? 

There’s no way to know.  

The world becomes a more magical place when you have children, but it also becomes a place fraught with danger.  All the information out there about safety provides us neurotic worrywart parents with an inexhaustible catalog of horrific what-ifs.  We are extremely lucky, blessed really, that in even our worst family disaster, the finger slamming, Lady A's pinky was fine.  

I’m not religious, but after each near miss, I have to look up and say, “Thank you.”