“Mom?”

Her voice was small in the phone.  I could sense the underlying waver.  And the fact that she was calling me mid soccer practice prepared me.

“Mom, I fell on my wrist,” she said, the unmistakable sound of crying accompanying her words.

It’s amazing how quickly “Mom mode” takes over in times of emergency.  There is no time to think.  There is no second guessing.  Suddenly, the outside world disappears and all that exists is my child and myself, and the fact that there is a problem that I need to handle. 

The first time I had to take my daughter to the emergency room, she had cut her head open in a game of chicken on the kindergarten playground.  A wagon handle had sliced her forehead.  When I saw her, there was blood in her hair, down her face, and all over her clothes.  My heart lurched for just a second, fear creeping in at this sudden in-my-face realization that my invincible daughter was not quite invincible.  But once that second was up, automatic pilot kicked in.  I comforted her and remained calm, even getting her to laugh a bit as we drove down to the emergency room where she would bravely take several stitches.

The second time she fell off a play structure and hit her head, knocking herself briefly unconscious.  She was dressed for a soccer game, and eager to go.  Upon inspection, and surveying the lump on her head, I told her that we’d go, but would stop if it was too much for her.  Her head was pounding wildly by halftime, and I had her pulled out of the game.  And once in the car, she lost everything she had eaten that day.  Back we went to the emergency room.

The CT Scan machine was a little intimidating, making my little girl look even more little.  The technician allowed me to come in the room with him to help her feel more comfortable.  He asked her to remain still, telling her when to breathe and then let the air blow out slowly.  For that short time in the tube, she managed to not throw up, but the rest of the time was spent heaving miserably.

This time ended up not being a concussion, miraculously enough.  But it was not the last time she hit her head with such force.  A year or so later she fell in the shower and hit her head once again.  This time I was prepared for the worst.  I kept her up an hour past her bedtime just to ensure that she was ok.  I then put her to bed with a pot next to her in case she needed to throw up.  Sure enough her frightened voice called to me from down the hall.  I packed her up and spent a good portion of the night in the emergency room by her side.  They wouldn’t let me go in the room with her this time for the CT Scan, but they did give me a rocking chair and turned the lights out as we waited for word from the doctor.  Once again, we were lucky without a concussion.

At the end of third grade, only weeks before school was ending and the third grade water picnic was to take place, my daughter broke her arm at school.  I raced to the school, and together we rode in the ambulance to the hospital with my mom and son traveling behind us.  By now we were so accustomed to the emergency room that I almost felt the need to request a reservation for the next year’s visit.  And the staff was starting to look familiar to me.  This was definitely our most entertaining visit, as we were serenaded by Janis Joplin incarnate herself accompanied by two cops, a woman who very seriously asked which one of them was the good cop and which was the bad cop.

My daughter has suffered an abscessed tooth, two cracked front teeth, scrapes, bruises, and so on.  And each time was dealt with in much of the same way.  I had calm clarity, and would only panic about the reality of the situation after she was safely taken out of my hands and placed in those of a doctor.  It is never easy to see my child hurt.  She is an extension of me.  The very first day I laid eyes on her, I realized that I had never really known what love was, that I had no clue whatsoever until that very moment.  I wanted to protect her, keep her safe.  And in those moments of lying next to her as she slept on a hospital bed for some ailment or another, I would relax into a tightened heart and shaking hands.  What if things had gone wrong?  What if it had been worse?  What if she had been seriously hurt, what if she died?  

This latest injury turned out to be a sprained wrist.  The skin at the joint was hot to the touch, but she was able to move it slightly, letting me know it wasn’t broken.  This time I decided to forgo the ER trip in favor of icing it and letting it heal naturally.  Besides, I hadn’t yet made my reservation for this year.

If you would like to volunteer for Project Pillow Suit, email me at winecountrymom@winecountrymom.com.