In the big world of wounds, a tiny laceration of thin skin
breaks my heart. I had come for two weeks to help my daughter and son-in-law
get through the waking agonies of a baby in teething torment. When a person is
sleep deprived reality gets warped and minor scenes such as the pile of dishes akimbo
in the sink or the laundry’s soft but menacing hill become unconquerable
mountains. So, we three, the baby’s mama, daddy and grammy, triple-teamed and
walked, rocked, cuddled, soothed, washed, straightened, folded, slept a little
and tried to find the balance of sanity. How we long for his teeth to cut
through the skin of his upper gums where four teeth hover shyly, their faces pressed against the translucent glass! (When I contemplate teething babies who suffer like
this, I question the existence of God.)
Just before I left them to return to the farm, work and
routines, James was cruising toward his daddy’s Macbook, so I quickly shut it.
The timing was synchronized with his sudden reach. The closing laptop pinched
the tiny middle finger of his right hand. Then it began to bleed, he wailed and we
blubbered (mama and I) while we raced and washed and examined it for depth and
seriousness (quick spurts of energy from nowhere!), while she nursed him, and
daddy helped me prepare a Band-aid (his first!) — the very skin I wish to be
permeable so that I might get inside and love him more completely than I do.
But not like this. The blood that flows between us must be kept hidden in its
treasure box, in the magic passages where a flying carpet would be humdrum.
There can be no thing that possibly comes close in worth
to that thin translucent finger the size of a worm in its ill-fitting bandage. He
sucked on it, seeming to understand this.
There will be lacerations. They are openings to the next
tiny death swimming toward us, and to all the big ones.
. . . and there will be healings. Lacerations/healings, lacerations/healings—the beat will go on for Baby James as it does for us, endlessly.
ReplyDeleteThank goodness, George. Lesley texted me last evening to say that when James woke up from his afternoon nap she couldn't even find the cut. Magic, aren't we?
DeleteAn Irish poem I recall said: " incursions, oh yes, there will be fierce incursions!". The magic is how quickly they heal and regroup, stronger for the next incursion. He can do this, he's strengthened by countless generations of ancestors who survived and thrived and passed on their best to him. Your daughter is fortunate to have you as back up when it all seems too much.
ReplyDeleteMary, it is the instantaneous confrontation of danger-fragility-mortality in his small body that upends me. Over time, watching him survive, these firsts will be a thing of the past.
DeleteI'm glad they are close now, there's no telling where they'll be next year when/if Brian gets a tenure track job.
Oh the days of teething...just the beginning of each day, each step, each breath...
ReplyDeleteIs there such a thing as balance of sanity? I guess we try to strive for it but I sometimes wonder if we really ever achieve it.
Sweet James with his first boo boo... there will be more...
I remember my mistake to try and use a Q-tip in my daughters ear. she jerked and the Q-tip puntured a hole in her ear drum. The ear drum healed but I will never forget it was my fault for the pain she had to endure.
Liz, you must have been devastated over the accident with your daughter's ear. We humans heal over our memories of these hard times. A mother gives birth in great pain and the next year wants to get pregnant again. Even my daughter, in the midst of this almost torturous time, is planning the next. We are a mix of pain and joy, and looking for relief in a balance of sanity is answered only temporarily, sometimes for an hour, sometimes a day, but usually not much longer.
DeleteOhhh! You are all tired and wounded too. The little one will outgrow his teething, his other childhood mishaps, and all of you will be chained closer and closer to each other, for this, for all the lacerations and mishaps that need family to succor.
ReplyDeleteYes, yes and yes.
Deletei love how you end your piece, ruth and how george then introduces healing.
ReplyDeletewhen my son was just a toddler he swallowed something metal, choked and then bled from the mouth, choked again and then turned purple in my arms. we managed to save him. it was a taut ride in the back of the ambulance to the hospital. by the time we arrived he had swallowed whatever had been caught in his throat and was himself (plus the miscellaneous metal object in his body that we discovered upon x-ray, perhaps a zipper tag), so damned cute and alive with his legs dangling off the examining table.
just a moment ago i kicked him off my computer and sent him to bed:) i will tuck him in soon. it could so easily have been different.
when he was an infant his first tooth was smashed upward and through his lip as he tried to climb the rungs of my kitchen chair. the dentist corked it back into his gums. the new one that grew in behind it, his adult tooth, is fractured. i wonder if it was fractured beneath the first. is that even possible?
what wounds remain behind even the healing?
it is, i think, the most difficult job to love someone as you do james, as i do my son. the blows keep coming alongside the joys. tell me more, i always want to say, tell me more ghost stories and don't forget to make me laugh too)) in both cases i cry with deep feeling and understanding)))
xo
erin
This is beautiful! I remember being fascinated by how my skin would heal beneath the bandage. I wondered how the edges knew how to grow toward each other.
ReplyDeleteOhhhhhh. And thus begins the Journey of lacerations and...yes...healings. May it all be so blanketed by the village that raises him!
ReplyDelete