safety

What is it about the holidays that seems to accentuate the possibility for bodily injury and harm? Are we more merry, and therefore less inclined to be wary of potential hazards? Is it the alcohol? The parties? Are we overly distracted by all that needs to be accomplished? Or is it simply more notable because when you become injured over the holidays it affects the entire season with regard to how you enjoy it?

Two weeks ago I was attending a holiday party at a friend’s house and as I was walking through a gated entryway into a courtyard the entire world tipped itself over and I found myself crashing down onto both of my knees and then face down on the sidewalk. What the hell just happened? I sat up, but couldn’t get up. The pain in my knees and shins was instantaneous, yet after a few moments I knew nothing was broken. After a quick assessment of how and why I fell, Dan hoisted me up and I hobbled to the front door. It turns out there was a very tiny step, about three inches deep right where you entered the courtyard from the gate. Apparently I missed that step. My cousin visiting from Michigan was with us and at one point she said, “I’m not gonna lie to you, that wasn’t even a little bit graceful.”

After walking into the party and greeting the hosts, I asked if they had a security camera on their front walkway. They said they didn’t, but they were curious as to why I would ask. So I said, “Well, I just ate shit on your front step and I wanted to be sure no one was going to watch that on instant replay or put it on You-tube.”

About thirty minutes later I could feel my heartbeat in my knees. They were throbbing terribly and stinging like crazy. I excused myself to the restroom and discovered that I had skinned both knees pretty badly. I was bleeding under my pants and the skin was already swelling and turning purple and blue with bruises. I had to mostly sit during the gathering because standing was so painful, and I wasn’t about to draw more attention to myself by asking my hosts for a bag of frozen peas to help with the swelling. Good times.

After we got home, I grabbed four Advil and two large therapy ice packs from my freezer and got comfortable on the couch. Dan and my cousin weren’t done having fun yet, so they walked to a local bar to have a few more drinks. About an hour later I got a text from Dan saying, “I ate shit on a curb in solidarity. I’m ok.” It turns out he missed the curb when he was walking home and did a full body yard-sale into the street. His knees were also skinned and bruised. We make quite the pair, don’t we?

It’s been two weeks since I fell and the bruising is almost gone. The skin has healed, mostly, but I still have tenderness in my knees. The other day I forgot about the injury and tried to kneel down on the wood floor to light the fireplace. That was a mistake. I ended up flopping over like I was having a seizure to take the pressure off the injury. It scared the hell out of my son.

And yesterday, my neighbor texted me that she was at urgent care. While walking down her stairs she missed a step and took a tumble. Thankfully, her ankle wasn’t broken but they sent her home in an air cast. My mother-in-law also recently fell and she did break her knee cap. Just cracked her patella right in two. She now has metal screws holding her knee cap together.

So seriously, I think I’m going to start a club. I need help thinking of a name though, and more members. A club has to have more than four members. So if you’ve ever eaten shit on the stairs, we want to hear your story!

Happy Holidays! 🙂

My daughter Bryn is ten years old and in the fifth grade. We live one block from her school. At the beginning of the school year she begged me to let her walk to school by herself. She had a convincing argument. She said, “It’s only a block, mom, and I’m old enough to walk a block by myself.” (To be read with the required level of pre-teen sarcasm and eye rolling).

She’s right, of course. When I was her age we played outside every day after school, running around the neighborhood, riding our bikes everywhere. As long as we were home by the time the street lights came on, our mom wouldn’t stand in the yard shouting our names until we came running. She is old enough to walk a block, and farther, by herself.

But life today isn’t the same as when I was her age. The dangers are real, and I do not trust the general population with the safety of my children. I think most people are genuinely caring and look out for kids in their neighborhoods, but it’s the person late for work that accelerates too quickly down their driveway without watching for school age kids on the sidewalk, and the child predators who look like nice people just wanting to stop and chat for a few seconds that scare the shit out of me. I feel bad that she isn’t allowed to run the neighborhood like I did at her age, but none of her friends are allowed to do that either. All of her friend’s parents are just as cautious as I am.

But she’s ten, and she is responsible and knows how to cross a street, watch for traffic, and not talk to strangers. I can’t choose to hold her back from something that is developmentally appropriate and allows her to grow because it scares me. So the least I can do to allow her some measure of independence is to let her walk to school by herself. She loves it. She feels like such a big girl, and I love seeing that look of satisfaction on her face when she walks in the door after school.

But I hate it. I hate not being there to watch over and protect her for the four minutes it takes her to walk one block.

I silently stress out every morning when we say good-bye at the front door. I watch her walk down the driveway, and I don’t stop watching until she rounds the corner and is out of my line of sight. And then I surreptitiously keep my eye on the clock. I know that as long as the school doesn’t call here by 9am that she made it safely. I start watching the clock again at 2:30pm. She’s usually home by 2:40pm, and then I take a deep breath and relax.

This is what I look like when I’m protecting my kids. For real.

I know this sounds obsessive and crazy. Especially to a younger person who has never had kids. But having children changes you. Having children brings out your protective instincts in a way nothing else can. I became the mother bear. I am that dangerous female Grizzly that will rip your throat out if you even think about physically harming one of my children. And I’m not alone. Thankfully, I’m in good company with all the other Grizzly mothers at Bryn’s school. We all agree that allowing our children to walk to school at a certain age is a necessary risk to help them mature, grow and learn to be responsible for themselves and recognize potentially dangerous situations and how to handle them. They need to know how to apply and use all the advice we’ve given them. “Look both ways before you cross the street, don’t talk to strangers, be aware of who’s around you and if someone approaches you and tries to get you to go with them, you drop your backpack, scream for help and run like hell is chasing you.” Well, I didn’t give her that last bit of advice in exactly those words, but she got the message.

So, I let her walk to school. The first few weeks were the hardest for me. About three weeks in I was sort of grilling her at the dinner table, trying to be nonchalant and casual about it. I didn’t want to be up in her face with overly detailed questions, but I wanted to know how it was going. I was obsessing, and I guess I wasn’t as subtle as I’d hoped because she looked at me and said, “It’s good, mom. There’s no bandits!” As she said this, she winked at me in a jaunty way and made finger guns. LOL!

In that moment she made me laugh out loud with her cheeky sense of humor, eased my fears and reassured me that she truly is a big girl, which broke my heart a little too. Now every morning when she leaves for school and kisses all of us good-bye, we all say, “No Bandits!” 🙂