Near Miss

There several times that I’ve almost killed my son, but I’ll just share a few:

• The time I flipped over his car seat when he was a few weeks old and I barely caught it before it rolled into oncoming traffic.
• The time I let him crawl up the two steps leading from our house to the concrete patio and he thunked his way down to the concrete.
• The time I had the oven door open and a knife in my hand and Jacob ran towards me and I reflexively went to him, knife still in hand, hot oven still open.
• The time that Jacob crawled halfway up my sister’s big staircase while Josh and I each thought the other was watching him.
• The time I left the big chopping knife on the edge of the counter, thinking it was out of reach until Josh demonstrated with a rock that it was very much within reach.

Clearly, I didn’t really almost kill him, but at the time it felt something like that. With my imagination, a near miss is just enough for me to picture the potential (and often very bloody) outcome.

I’m thinking of this because today I made my first call to 911. My neighbor was pounding on my door this morning and I opened it up to find her distraught, her four year old in her arms with a bloody towel covering his face. A door mirror had fallen on his him while she was in the bathroom. The paramedics came and took him to the hospital, and while he’ll have a good scar to tell the ladies about, he still has all his teeth, the shards just missed his eye, and he should be okay. Still, that doesn’t do much to alleviate a mother’s guilt because something bad happened under her care.

We make so many mistakes as parents, and it seems so hard to acknowledge it, like we should always be watching, as if all the baby proofing and safety gear out there should mean that there won’t be any boo boos or trips to the ER. And while so far Jacob’s mishaps have only needed a little ice or band-aid here and there, I know that there will be a day when there’s a big one, and it may be on my watch. I hope that I can give that future me the same empathy that I gave my friend this morning.

Anyway, I better sign off. Jacob's been alone in the bath for a while and it's been quiet; too quiet. . .