Love: Perhaps the Scariest Thing on the Planet

This morning, I was awakened to Gabe's sweet voice saying, "Mom, perhaps you should wake up now." OMG, how I laughed! When did he grow up? It was especially cute to me because during the week, I was having clear visions of being his age. I have to wake him up every morning. I hear my own mother's voice as I'm saying, "Rise and shine Gabriel." Every morning, he throws his head under the covers and says, "FIVE more minutes, Mom" or "Be quiet, Mom!" I'm pretty sure I did the same thing as a kid. I have never been a morning person! Still, it was the "perhaps" this morning that got me giggling.

Later in the day, Gabe gave me the scare of my life. We were at the park next to the pool where the kids had just been swimming. He was going down a slide -- a slide of all things on the playground is not the first thing to make a mother worry. It was a rather tall slide, and he decided suddenly to try to slow himself down by pressing his shoes on the slide. By some freak of nature accident, his rubber-soled shoes stopped him too suddenly and he flipped out of the top of the slide and landed (I kid you not) on his head. He screamed that horrible piercing scream while I prayed and prayed that he was going to be okay. Tim was much closer to him than I was, and I watched as Tim ran to where Gabe was. (I was walking with Sofia to the car to get something when the whole thing happened.)

I immediately began taking stock of good things. Good thing number 1: Gabe did not lose consciousness. Good thing number 2: no gushing blood. Praise the Lord! Good thing number 3: pool staff on the scene right away with ice for Gabe's head. Good thing number 4: the ground was mostly mulch and fairly soft. Good thing number 5: He was answering our questions and did not seem disoriented.

My little guy is okay, but I think my big guy almost had a stroke when Gabe asked him why he didn't catch him. Poor Tim. Good thing number 6: Gabe did not ask me the same question. I would've really lost it. You just can't predict that your child will fall from a slide! Seriously, of all the playground equipment, that is the last piece I worry about, especially after I had spent all of my worrying allowance concentrating so hard on the kids possibly drowning. Gabe has two bumps on his head and what looks like a 4-inch laceration (I think from mulch he hit), some minor scrapes on the side of his forehead and what will probably be a nasty bruise on his shoulder tomorrow. His new buzzed haircut is going to show off this boo-boo quite nicely.

I was reading in Anne Lamott's book Grace, Eventually that having kids is like having the muzzle of an invisible gun pressed quietly to your temple for the rest of your life. Once you have a child, you never again draw a worry-free breath. I am convinced that this is a true statement. Children are the source of so much laughter, but they are also the source of much worry and fright. I can't tell you how many times I have gone in to look at my children at night while they are sleeping to check their chest heaving rate and to feel their foreheads. That may explain why it's tough for me to get up when that damnedable alarm goes off. There's some other quote about once you have kids, your heart walks around outside of your body, and that one resonates just as clearly with me. I just don't know what I would do without them, and I pray I will never have to know.

One thing I do know is that for all of my worrying, I am deep down an optimist. I could've been panicking and thinking about how I might not ever get to hear Gabriel wake me up again, but I wasn't. I was mentally taking stock of all the good things. Having kids has taught me how to do more of this. In a panicky situation, if you panic, your kids pick up on it and immediately panic with you. If you're calm and positive, they follow suit. Children are amazing. No perhaps about it.