Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Triggers

Today, the dog bite on Z.'s left hand is pretty much healed, and it's her last day on antibiotics. She may not even have a scar, when the redness fades.

Oh, yeah, her left hand: the same arm that was broken last year. It didn't make me happy to see her favoring it again, though she only favored it for a couple of days. And it shocked me back to the NICU to smell antibiotics in her diaper--the first diapers she ever wore in her life reeked of amoxicillin, too. Not that I was allowed to change those, since they were still attempting to get a urine sample from her at the time and it was very easy to dislodge that little bag, but I smelled them when the nurses took them off. I recognized the smell last week from how it smelled 2 1/2 years ago. I recognized the smell then from my own pee earlier that morning, in the maternity ward across town where I'd given birth and she'd been taken from me. Those needless chemicals passing through our bodies and our separation were just two of the long list things that I hated about having wound up in the hospital to birth her.

And the dogbite itself, well it flipped my mother out, thirty-odd years after I was bitten as a toddler.

It was a week like that. Everything and everyone set on edge. I've been seized by an irrational need to hold Z.'s hand everywhere we walk.

So when I was riding in a friend's car this weekend, and I watched the sequence unfurl as we were hit by another car turning left? It was just the next shoe dropping, you know? It was the thing I'd been expecting from the moment I got in the car, the thing I expect whenever I get in any car. The only thing surprising was that when we looked for damage, there was hardly a mark to be seen: the fender had done its job well.

I only wish every collision left so little to regret in its wake.

10 comments:

susan said...

Sounds like you need some hugs and snuggles. What a week. I hope things get better.

Magpie said...

Damn. Sorry about the car incident. And everything else.

I hold Miss M.'s hand all the time when we're outside walking - instinct says "don't let go".

kathy a. said...

((( S )))

that "irrational need to hold Z's hand"? that is normal, my friend. very normal. she is still a little bitty one, and you are very much her mom.

i'm very sorry about the accident.

niobe said...

Sometimes the fenders work. Good to know.

Anonymous said...

S: I'm so sorry to hear about all of this. Love, E.

S. said...

Thanks for the supportive thoughts, all.

Niobe, sometimes they do. If only every situation came fitted with the right one.

Jody said...

I hope things are better soon. Sounds like it's been quite a week.

S. said...

Jody, thank you. You are a master of understatement.

Anonymous said...

Very rational thing indeed. Hope she continues to heal - is she showing much nervousness of dogs? I was bounced by a big red setter when I was two or three. I still remember it and I'm still terrified of bigger dogs.

S. said...

(un)relaxeddad, no sign of nervousness around our dogs, and my own dog bite as a toddler didn't affect my love for dogs. I'm sorry about your encounter with that setter, though!