My Level of Awareness

Beth, at So the Fish Said had a post today that really summed up one of the many reasons this baby-swinging thing is really laying heavy on my mind. 

As a mother, on the occasions when I have inadvertently placed my child in danger or unintentionally caused him pain, the images and the feeling of breathless momentary terror have lingered so vividly that I cannot imagine willfully doing something so horrifying.

There are two of these newsreels that I play in my head and that never cease to clutch at my heart and stop my breath.  The first is the day Harry fell out of the shopping cart.  I don’t want to relive this by writing it over, but I can tell you I still hear that sickening thud.  I still remember snatching him from Kris and holding him, feeling him all over, watching him anxiously for signs that he had somehow broken his shoulder or damaged his brain in the fall, and the quick realization that I should have checked to be sure the strap was secure.  But I was distracted by shoes.  Shoes, for crying out loud.

The second was more recent, and more directly my fault.  A couple weekends ago, we were visiting with Kris’s parents and were preparing for an outing.  I poured myself a travel mug of coffee, fresh-brewed and scalding hot.  My father-in-law had singed his tongue on it not a few minutes before.  I put the mug on the coffee table for two minutes to find something we needed to bring.  I cannot even remember now what it was.  Two minutes, I found out with graphic certainty, is ample time for a quick and inquisitive toddler to pull steaming hot coffee down on his chest.

Coffee poured out of the drinking spout down Harry’s chest from his armpit to his hip.  At first he was too shocked to scream, all he could do is wave his hands, his face contorted in silent agony.  When he finally caught his breath, he wailed, clutching at his burned chest as I whipped the still-steaming onsie off of him.  He was still screaming pitifully as we tried to put cold clothes and cold packs on his tiny writhing form, his chest bright red and blistering.  I could barely breathe as I fumbled for the card with the 24-hour nurses line, and the number of the urgent care center.  I kept saying “So sorry, baby, Mommy’s fault, Mommy’s fault” as if Harry could absolve me, as if he even knew that my carelessness had caused his pain.  It was the single most miserable moment of my life.

Harry has nothing to show for the ordeal but a few little pink scars that will probably fade by his second birthday.  They won’t last nearly as long as the scars on my heart.  That he has all but forgotten the incident, that he still loves me and runs to me when he is sad or hurt, is a rather astringent balm.  The innocent trust is almost as painful as it is healing.   How easy it is to break that faith, how quickly forgiven by him, how impossible to forgive myself.  

I keep telling myself that is how it should be.  But it weighs hard.

More on the “baby as weapon” news.

Now, how drunk do you have to be before you don’t realize a baby is a baby?

And if this is “no big deal” to the father, just how does one define a “big deal”?  Apparently fractured skulls and brain injury do not qualify.  I obviously need my values re-defined.

All right.  I am on a news boycott, starting now.

Folks, there is somebody, a fellow mom-blogger, out there, that if you are not reading, you need to.

Go and read “From the Mountain Top to the Valley Floor”

Prepare to have your heart stolen by a beautiful blue-eyed boy.  This is one of those blogs that reminds me every day that having joy in our life lies in how we find our blessings.

This made me want to go home and hug my son.

I just cannot believe someone could do this to their 4-week-old.

I just don’t know what else to say.

I am not one of those women who are going to tell you that five years ago today, I married my best friend.  Because, well, not to state the obvious, but I don’t sleep with my best friends.  Not as a rule anyway.

But, I will choose another cliche.  Five years ago today, I married my soulmate.  When I was thirteen, a psychic told my mother (because my mother believes in such things), that I would marry twice, and that my second marriage would be the love of my life.  It was a prediction that always frightened me, because having lived as the child of parents who divorced when I was too young to remember, I always dreamed of being the kind of person that beat the odds, the kind of person who would give her children a happy family with a mommy and a daddy that lived in one place and loved each other madly.  In retrospect, I needn’t have put myself through so much angst. 

I met my husband shortly after the demise of my first marriage.  So shortly, in fact, that accusations abounded as to his role in my divorce (which was, incidentally, none).  After our first short fling, I warned him “Don’t take this seriously.  This is not about love.  This is about lust.”  On our second date he told me he was going to marry me.  I laughed.  He laughed last, and best, three years later, when we were married in the setting sun under a floral bower of twinkling lights, wearing hawaiian prints and giggling madly.

I think one of the highest compliments that can be paid to a member of the male gender is to be what people describe simply as a “Good Man”.  My husband is everything that term means, with all its deepest nuances.  He loves his wife.  He cherishes his child.  He honors his commitments.  He is steadfast in friendship. He is true to his God.  While I tease him of having the biggest ego on the planet, in truth I have never seen a man more honest in humility, or more decently humane.   He simply is what he is.

In eight blindingly short years together, we have endured close family death and illness, a heartrending journey through infertility, the loss of our home and two beloved pets, displacement, and life under the lens of three reigns of scrutiny in the SCA.  Some days it seems we have lived lifetimes in the blink of an eye.  And through it all, we not only emerged intact, but blessed.  We have endured and we have conquered.

It is said that marriage changes people.  Some feel loss in the capitulation to “coupledom”, and struggle to maintain their individuality.  I think the greatest joy of my marriage, the thing that makes every morning easier to rise to, every evening more peaceful, is that, after eight years, I am more “myself” than I ever was alone.  The participation in our joint life has made each part greater than the whole.  I am not “Mrs. Kris”.  He is not “Mr. Robbin”.  We are just “us”, a project of equal roles, roles that have blended so perfectly with our identities that they have simply become what we are.

Us.

Through the strength we have in each other, we have been able to give our son a love so profound that we could fold around him like a blanket when the everything around him was in upheaval and change.    His world, secure between us, went on with the rising and falling of the day in blissful innocence.  We are all together, and that is all that matters.

I cannot build in fantasy a more loving partner, a more perfect helpmate, a father more generous with his affection.  My prayers, my hopes, are for “more”, not “better”.  In my dreams, we still hold hands before our grandchildren, we still squabble over packing the car, we still stand side by side in the kitchen with the riches of domesticity spread before us on our table.  He is more beautiful to me with every passing day, and every day I try to live up to the gifts I have been given in abundance. 

I will never find the words to thank him for what he has given me, the meaning of our life together, the depth of my affection. All I will say, is MTAMTE, my love.  Every single day.

Much to my everlasting chagrin, this, shown much smaller than life-sized:

Looks shockingly real when it drops out of the bedclothes onto the mattress in a dim room at night.

I have been punk’d by a 15-month old.

Okay, it’s my turn to lie.  I had about a third of the book to finish, and I meant to do it last night (hey, it wasn’t unreasonable, I read almost inhumanly fast), but the ADD took over last night and I got involved in a weaving project that kept me up until after midnight.  Loom setup always takes me longer than I think it will.  Considering my schedule, I will probably be finishing the rest this weekend, and will post the review on Monday.  That will solve my perpetual Monday problem.  Two birds, one stone and all that jazz.

But, in the meantime, I introduce to you the new selection for October, based on the last-minute rearrangements of the Steering Committee:

The GAMBLE Steering Committee had a secret closed door meeting, and the consensus was more or less unanimous.

We need Fluff. 

We are going to trade the titillating and informative for the simply titillating.  Just because we like that word - titillating.

Given the forewarning that book order was subject to be screwed with, we are swapping the order and putting “Star” by Pam Anderson ahead of the much-anticipated penis book.  Not only was it felt this break in the program was necessary for the head-banging relief of all, but the Committee felt that reading the former will increase the appreciation of the latter. Consider it a palate cleanser.  Light and just a little tangy.

Tomorrow I will post my review of “Greek Fire…” and a synopsis of the new next thing.

I will forward all complaints regarding the format change to the Committee.

Oops.  What’s that?

They say “Tough bananas toots.  We want Pam.”

My boys are in the middle.

Three fine sons.  Three proud and loving dads.  One beautiful Louisiana evening.  It really doesn’t get any better than this.

Things that get me through my material-girl day, in approximately chronological order:

Coffee.  Hot. Fresh. Instantly.

The soundtrack of my life.  Yes, it’s only a 3rd generation iPOD, but I have an unnatural attachment to it.

I have said it before.  This shit - is brilliant.  When nothing else will calm the uglies, this is the cure.

A bubble bath EVERY night.  Alone. 

And this?  Needs no explanation.