Bubby had an accident a couple days ago: Running out to the car with Mommy, he bit it … on asphalt … HOT, desert asphalt.
It was his first big owie to leave a mark. Megan wrote on her blog,* “To my horror there was blood covering his poor, no longer perfect, 21 month old knee.”
Bubby was okay but he’s now marred, no longer perfect.
Those of you who have been a mom a while know that although this was pretty traumatic for Megan — and Bubby — this owie will fade, not only on Bubby’s knee, but in memory, too.
But, sorry to say, Megan, there are bigger owies to come, ones that will make Bubby’s skinned knee pale (probably even disappear) in comparison. Years from now you won’t recall this bloody “mess,” as Bubby kept calling it. What you’ll recall are the bigger owies, the ones that leave lifelong scars.
I vividly recall the first scarring incident with Brianna. She was 15 months old and running around the living room of our small apartment. (Crazy kid started walking at 9 months!) It was all fun and games, of course, until she got hurt — falling into the corner of the coffee table, gashing open her face near her eyebrow … and narrowly missing her eye! Blood, blood, blood! Everywhere! It was my first experience with facial cuts — which bleed like mad — and my first experience with a seriously wounded baby. It was pretty horrible. And it’s the reason why we did without a coffee table for years and years and years. Even now, as a grandma, my coffee table is ROUND with no corners waiting to gash open little faces.
Megan’s first scar came on a little less fast and furious but involved surgery. Like I’ve said before, Megan was always destined to be a mom. She loved kids younger than her from Day One, especially her younger cousins. She played with them, mothered them and carried them around — and got a hernia to underscore my rants that she shouldn’t be lifting the little ones when she was just a little one herself. I can’t remember how old she was … maybe 6 or so … but my little Meggie actually had to have surgery to repair a hernia at that young age and still has the scar to prove her early mothering inclinations.
The scars with Brianna and Megan were fairly traumatic for me as a mommy, for them as kiddos. But my poor Andie had, without a doubt, the absolute worst initiation into scarring.
It started off painless enough: Andie had warts. She had warts on her hands, she had warts in a spot just below her bottom lip. They weren’t huge warts, but they were getting bigger and the doctor decided my 5-year-old Andie needed them removed — by burning them off. She’d only feel the pin prick of the shot to numb her, he promised, so we went ahead with it.
The warts on her hands were no big deal; the ones on her face required me and a nurse to hold her down for the shot right into her chin … which obviously hurt my baby like hell. After a moment or two to let the numbing kick in, the doctor had me stand at the head of the table and firmly hold Andie’s head down while he approached her face with the burning hot rod (this was before the harmless lasers). When he touched her face with it she SCREAMED! The numbing stuff hadn’t numbed her as promised and my baby could feel the burning. Quickly the doctor announced we were already there and needed to go forward as Andie would never in a million years allow us to attempt such a thing again. So as I held down my little girl, with tears streaming down her face and mine and the nurse doing all she could to hold Andie’s mouth closed and stifle the screams so the doctor could do his job, the warts were burned off. And that horrible scene was burned into both my memory and my baby girl’s, leaving not only physical scars, but emotional ones, too.
So yeah, Megan, poor Bubby is marred. But at least this time it took only an Elmo Band-Aid to make it all better. Appreciate those little mars; with scars, it’s not so easy.
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p.s. I dropped your name on Gina's post, Barb. ;)
thank you so much Lisa, that helps a lot. I know he tried to blame me for so much stuff, but like I told all of his family and mine none of that added up to a divorce. I do realize it's his needs, it just hurts so bad to think how many years he's
Poor little guy! Get some Mederma and it should fade any scar. He is so cute
My darling daughter, 16, is a walking disaster. Right now, she’s sporting a fat lip because she accidentally whacked in the mouth by a classmate yesterday. Just silly teenage goofing around!
But my favorite saga was back a few years, when she had turned 13. We finally let her stay alone in the house for a few hours. She called me on my cell to tell me she had cut her thumb but had managed to stop most of the bleeding. She apparently was trying to slice a stale cibatta role with a paring knife…
Anyway, I rushed home expecting to see a neat slice in her tender young flesh and almost lost it when it seemed that the tip of her entire thumb was hanging my a thread. She was calm and cool, I was ready to retch. We rushed her to the hospital, got the stitches, etc. Her thumb still looks like it has a tiny butt crack running down the middle. We’ve asked her if she wants to have it fixed, but she says it’s a conversation piece…
Ohmigosh! The thumb gash would have scared me to death! I love that your daughter appreciates the conversational aspects of the owie!