Sorry, son, Mum’s a failure in a crisis
THERE are certain moments in life that are sink or swim. However much you manage to generally just about hold it together day to day, a sudden emergency is the truest possible test of your mettle.
I have now discovered the awful truth.
I have no mettle. I am a mettlefree zone. I am mettle-ly deficient.
It’s the phone call every parent dreads, and last week I got it, just two months into Albie’s school career.
“He’s fallen in the playground and cracked his head open. We think he needs stitches. Please come and take him to hospital.”
It’s a wonder everyone on the road between my home and the school that day is still alive, because I drove there in a thick fog of blind panic and terror, crying, at speeds of up to 900mph.
I sprinted from the car into the building, arriving breathless, sweating and shaking.
“MY SON,” I screamed, “IS INJURED.”
I have never used the word injured before. Apparently I turn Victorian in a crisis.
The school secretary, who had clearly seen it all before a million times, thank goodness, smiled kindly and told me I needed to calm down or I was going to frighten Albie more than cracking his head open had.
I always thought that when you became a mum some kind of serene, capable-ness magically took over you and replaced the scared idiot inside. Turns out, not so much actually.
I gathered myself together and plastered on a brave face as she led me to my boy. He was sitting on his teacher’s lap, looking very small.
He was bruised, swollen and bloodstained, but being heartbreakingly brave. He looked up at me and attempted a grin. It was all a bit too much.
I opened my mouth and someone’s brisk grandmother came out. “Oh dear. What a shame. Never mind.”
Never mind?!
I’m still kicking myself. The first time he gets seriously hurt, when he is alone and only four years old, and his mum rocks up afterwards and tells him he shouldn’t mind?
My only hope is that the bash on his head was enough to make the whole day blurry, so he forgets I said it. Otherwise I better get a second job asap, because I hear therapy ain’t cheap.
Luckily – for both of us – Albie didn’t need stitches. And of course, our local A&E department was amazing and took incredible care of him (and one of the nurses suggested I have a brandy, which made it officially medicinal).
And he recovered well enough to go to the birthday party of one of his classmates at a soft play centre over the weekend.
He got kicked in the face while he was there, obviously.
Mind you, what would better complement his black eye and the bloody gash above it than a cut lip? Did I mention he lost his first tooth a few weeks ago? Yes,
of course, right at the front, where you can really see it.
All in all, it’s a strong look that has come together perfectly... just in time for his first school photo to be taken tomorrow.
‘‘ I drove to school in a thick fog of blind panic and terror