EVERYTHING
FOR YOUR FAMILY
KID
QUIPS
During last July’s 5.8 earthquake, 3-year-old Bronwyn told her 1-year-old sister, “We’re going for a wiggle.” READ MORE
Fatherhood
|
||||
|
My 2-year-old son is wearing a cast that starts just below his left shoulder and ends at his hand. The cast is blue. The short sleeve of his white T-shirt is whipping in the wind; the blue cast is not. My son is climbing a rock one-handed. I should not allow this. I should say, "This is how you got into this mess." Only it's not how he got into this mess. My wife and I have no idea how he got into this mess. He was in his room, playing with blocks, having a quiet moment. He doesn't have many quiet moments, so my wife smiled upon the moment and tiptoed away. We have heard that it is good to allow a 2-year-old his quiet moments. A few quiet moments later, he shouted, and my wife ran to him, and he pointed to his arm, and he said, "Arm." We have been told, by people wiser, or at least older, than us, that these sorts of things just happen. To which we reply, silently but simultaneously (we have parent-telepathy), "Not on our watch." This couldn't have "just happened," because we wouldn't allow it to "just happen." It must have been something we DID. We are unwilling to entertain the notion of our powerlessness, so instead we entertain the notion of our beastliness. Didn't I bat that very hand out of the way a few days back when he wouldn't let me change him? Didn't I engage in an ill-conceived game of "Big Little Boy," in which my son reaches up, takes one of my thumbs in each hand, and lets me raise him, arms extended, all the way to my shoulders? Games in which small children hang from the thumbs of adults should probably not be played. On the other hand (this from the doctor), such games probably do not cause fractures to both bones of the forearm. At first, the doctor did not think my son had a broken arm. One reason for this was that my son did not act like a small boy with a broken arm. My son is what you might call a tactical shouter. His outrage does not get the better of him; rather, he uses his outrage to get the better of YOU. The doctor noticed that, in the waiting room, my son ran around scaling furniture and flirting with 12-year-old girls; only on the examination table, when asked to stay still, did he scream bloody murder. None of this was any different from his approach to an ordinary well-baby visit. When it finally came time to X-ray (and I do mean finally, but that's another story, for another day), my son put up one hell of a fight, flailing at us with both arms, one of which, we were soon to learn, was in pieces. "Kids with broken arms don't do that," said the X-ray tech. "This one does," I said. It's a perverse sort of pride, this wonderful tingle a father gets while gloating over his son's uncontrollable, manipulative, self-endangering behavior in a potentially radioactive environment. My wife and I put on lead aprons and held our son down while the astonished tech disappeared behind a wall and took a snapshot. Everyone keeps telling us we have a tough little boy. I like it, but I wonder if I'm getting buttered up. What are they buttering me up for? The world is full of wily prosecutors. My son's arm is broken, and there's no excuse for that, and someone must be held responsible, and what better someone than me? Did I mention that I'm proud of my rough-and-tumble boy? I've parked my feelings at the intersection of guilt and pride, where all the windows on all the buildings reflect back on me. It seems I should instead be somewhere at the corner of pity and caution. Shouldn't I feel at least a little bit extra-protective, this week of all weeks, when my newly wounded son is rock climbing in a big blue cast? My son makes it up the rock. Now he is walking along a narrow brick catwalk alongside a swimming pool. I follow him. I pantomime extreme caution for my wife's sake. But I'm watching him in front of me, and all I can really think is, "What a tough little boy." Greg Blake Miller of Las Vegas has completed his first novel. He is a regular contributor to this column. |
||||
RSS Subscribe
Digg This ArticleSEARCH THE SITE
