You think after a while maybe you’ve got a handle on the whole parenthood thing. You think, hey, I’ve been at this long enough that I’ve got some idea of what I’m doing. Yeah, it’s hard, it’s really hard, but at least I’ve got a pretty good idea of what to expect.
If you’ve thought that at any point, you’re an idiot, a fact which is made abundantly clear shortly after you think you’ve got a handle on the whole parenthood thing.
Because things’ll be going along somewhat smoothly and then one afternoon you’ll hear your very-nearly-two-year-old waking up from his nap. So you go in to get The Boy and you see that his face is covered in blood and there are pools of it on the sheets. The place looks like a crime scene. And it turns out that you haven’t been doing this nearly long enough for the sight of that to not only horrify but very nearly drive you to your knees. Your mouth drops open and sounds come out but whether or not they’re words you couldn’t possibly say.
The room begins to spin but just then The Boy turns and grins at you and his smile is so sweet, if excessively bloody, that you go back to being merely horrified and perhaps a bit nauseated.
And you realize that he’s been having nosebleeds a lot lately, mainly because he’s been falling down a lot lately, and even though he’s getting better at breaking his fall with his hands, it’s still not his automatic reaction the way it is with the overwhelming majority of humans. You know, just another way for The Boy to set himself apart.
So you realize that his always-tender-these-days nose must have been affected by the dryness in the air and he must have developed a pretty substantial nosebleed and either in his sleep or as he was groggily waking up he swiped his hands across his face and nose and smeared it everywhere, giving him that undeniably arresting Texas Chainsaw Massacre patina.
And you find yourself wondering how you’re possibly going to get those enormous bloodstains out of the sheets before your guests arrive. And that makes you realize that life’s going to keep tossing you curveballs, interspersed with change-ups and, alas, fastballs, many of them speeding straight at your head, but as long as you know when to hit the dirt, you might just be okay. Maybe. You’re never gonna have this whole thing down cold, but maybe you can at least not get beaned each and every single time you step into the batter’s box.
So a week later when Top Management comes home from the doctor’s with The Boy and says, "Yeah, it’s pneumonia," and you just nod because you’d both known your now-fully-two-year-old had pneumonia—that exact cough followed twelve hours later by the tell-tale fever is nothin’ new no more. Having the doctor confirm a diagnosis like that is no longer horrifying. It’s just another Wednesday afternoon, albeit an unusually expensive one.
It’s guaranteed. Life’ll keep throwing you curveballs just to remind you of your place in the whole scheme of things. If you’ve got kids, your place is to keep stepping into the box, watching out for the beanballs, knowing that a walk’s as good as a hit, that you’re probably never going to hit that grand slam and that sometimes you just gotta take one in the ribs for the team.
"If you’ve got kids, your place is to keep stepping into the box, watching out for the beanballs, knowing that a walk’s as good as a hit, that you’re probably never going to hit that grand slam and that sometimes you just gotta take one in the ribs for the team."
I agree. But I still don't like baseball. Maybe this is *why* I don't like baseball ....
Posted by: Karen E. | Saturday, December 17, 2005 at 05:04 PM