haikujaguar: Just Cause

M. C. A. Hogarth (

haikujaguar) wrote,
@ 2008-03-29 22:14:00

Current mood:	quiet
Current music:	Gabriel & Dresden - Dangerous Power
Entry tags:	health, life, mom in spots, philosophy

Just Cause
For as long as I can remember, I've been able to dream myself out of nightmares. My subconscious and I... we have a pact. I pay attention when it speaks and in turn it declines to press the point once it's made.

But now... now I have nightmares I can't wake from.

A couple of months after the baby was born I put her in the baby carrier, nestled against my chest with her face resting on my collarbone, and went to the chocolate shop. The curb leading up to the door is very steep. I misjudged it. Completely.

For the first time in my adult life, I fell. Not just tripped. Fell. Both of my feet left the ground.

There was no time to acknowledge there was nothing I could do. A two-month-old baby landing on a concrete edge with 140 pounds on top of her was not going to survive, and it didn't matter that I didn't have time to brake my fall.

We stopped.

I was on my knees. My right palm was flat against the ground. My left was wrapped around her, cradling her head... which was less than a foot from the ground, the length of my bent arm. She didn't even blink. When I looked down at her she was staring at the world with mild curiosity, unperturbed.

And I, I shoved myself upright, stepped up onto the curb and walked into the chocolate shop. I shook while I drank, and the heat of the chocolate scalded my scraped palm through the paper cup. I could feel the bruises spreading on my knees.

Once upon a time, I'd thought vanity would be enough to spur me to exercise regularly. It was... for a while. But it never kept me at it, day after day. Running until my ribs feel like curved knives. Lunging with sword, point-out, my legs burning and arm trembling from exhaustion. Biking uphill, pollen stinging my eyes.

When vanity wasn't enough, I thought it was over. The only thing that could possibly motivate me, I thought then, was the romance of a cause. But what cause could possibly obtain, in a modern world? I was never like to be the heroine of any story.

More fool I.

To be quick enough to dive for her. To be strong enough to hold her. To be fast enough to race her. All my nightmares are of her coming to harm. I know inevitably she will. But if it is in me to prevent it, I don't want my body stopping me.

So I run for her. And as my heart expands and I feel the love of those around me, I run for them. For all of the people I have failed to understand need me. Need me to be strong. To be healthy. To live and laugh alongside them for as many years as my heart will beat.

I don't think the mother's nightmares will ever go away... but then, my duty won't either. So I no longer try to dream my way free of them. The point has to be made, again and again and again. When I wake I lean forward and rest my brow on my arm, and then I renew my resolve.

Live now. Pay attention. Grow strong.

Grow strong.

(Post a new comment)

	moonfire77 2008-03-30 02:24 am UTC (link)
	This was exactly what I needed to read, exactly when I needed to read it. Well said. (Reply to this)

	Sooth ysabetwordsmith 2008-03-30 02:25 am UTC (link)
	This has a great and terrible beauty. Thank you for sharing. (Reply to this)

	dulcinbradbury 2008-03-30 02:25 am UTC (link)
	Oh my god that is terrifying. In Boston, when I was about 3 and my sibling was a baby, my mother fell as she was getting off the T. The only thing she could do was let go of my hand and twist so she didn't land on Liz. A flood of people came over & picked her up, the stroller up & made sure we were all okay. (Reply to this)

	fireriven 2008-03-30 02:26 am UTC (link)
	You are amazing and inspirational... to yourself, I hope, as much as to all of us. (Reply to this)

	in_this_guise 2008-03-30 02:33 am UTC (link)
	My son is why I lost 80 pounds, and started dancing and doing yoga after years away. For the same reasons, only we fell down the stairs, and somehow I twisted so he landed on my and not vice versa... (Reply to this)(Thread)

	arielstarshadow 2008-03-30 02:41 am UTC (link)
	I think most humans do this instinctively - I have no children of my own (though being 12 and 13 years younger than my two sisters means I did do quite a bit of "mother-helping" when I was growing up) and I can remember a time when I was carrying a child and tripped, and my first instinct was to twist and drop to my knee so as to avoid hurting the child. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

archangelbeth
2008-03-30 04:03 am UTC (link)

When I was pregnant, I slipped on ice, out in front of our being-built home. Somehow, I remembered... I think it was the Stage Combat class? Something. I felt myself slipping and sat down. I wound up on my back, blinking bemusedly at the sky, barely even stinging from it.

Everyone was, of course, freaking out. Pregnant woman, slipped on ice, fell down!

Learning how to fall is important.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

arielstarshadow
2008-03-30 02:39 am UTC (link)

I'm glad I added your journal - and I appreciate this post a great deal. I'm struggling right now with issues related to exercise. My free time is extremely precious to me now that I'm really dedicating myself to writing my first novel. After spending a number of years working out two and a half hours a day six days a week, I found myself completely burned out on exercising. So I stopped, and haven't really exercised now in over two years. Neither of those extremes were good for me. Thus, my biggest problem is finding some sort of balance.

On a different subject - do you still give Balance Card readings? I sent an Email to you a couple of weeks ago, but haven't heard back so it occurred to me that perhaps you no longer do them. If you do, I'd love to order one (the paying kind!).

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l_l_u_w_d
2008-03-30 02:47 am UTC (link)

You will continually be surprised at what you will do for your child, as both you and your child grow, and mature. I know. I have had five of them. What you will do to protect them, to do what is best for them, what you will sacrifice for them, often at the expense of yourself. I am still suffering from a shoulder injury that happened early in November, when I was carrying my six year old down the stairs, and I lost my balance and was falling. I threw myself backwards, holding on tight and for dear life to my child, and just rode it out to the bottom of the stairs. She thought it was great fun, actually, her precise words were 'like riding a sled'. She was unharmed, and unafraid, she knew and trusted that I wouldn't let her get hurt. And, she was right, there is nothing I wouldn't do to protect her, and any of my children, from getting hurt. Because I am the Mommy.

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	allykat 2008-03-30 02:52 am UTC (link)
	This sounds remarkably like the manner in which I finally quit smoking. Only... I had no child, just the dream of a child. (Reply to this)

	hyanan 2008-03-30 03:17 am UTC (link)
	My drive for exercise started after standing in the spot where my father keeled over in the kitchen from a heart attack. I resolved not to die the same way. (Reply to this)

	kulhain 2008-03-30 03:41 am UTC (link)
	That is scary stuff. My Mom had a fall like that in a stair case while she was carrying me in her arms. To keep me safe she ended up breaking a bone. In very, totally unrelated news - I'd like to make you aware of this if you aren't already. == Lost Dragon (Reply to this)

archangelbeth
2008-03-30 04:01 am UTC (link)

I tripped once, with my kid, in a parking lot. Except I think she bumped her head a little. She cried, I nursed her, and then we went home and... it was her nap time. "Can you keep her awake?" the nurse asks at the doctor's office when I called. And I said, "It's her nap time. Wild horses couldn't keep her awake."

So we went to the doctor's office, and she was fine.

It was scary.

(Ah, and the time she choked? She wasn't breathing for... two minutes, maybe? if that? I only lost a few years off my life...)

Yeah.

[edit: And my mother tells a story of how I squeezed through stair railings and fell nearly a full floor, onto hard ground, and was somehow unharmed. Kids are tough, at times, too. Thank something.]

Edited at 2008-03-30 04:04 am UTC

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ladytwnks
2008-03-30 04:59 am UTC (link)

mama was carrying my little bother (not a typo) and slipped on the stairs a bit...i fell down the entire flight and have a scar on my lip to tell of it.

i fell over a speed bump when miss satan was about 2 months old. i had been carrying her in a front pack, as you were, and had taken her out of it literally minutes before i fell. i was able to shift her to the side while i went full length. she never touched the ground. that was the first time i broke a rib. skinned my knees and elbow and was never so thankful in my life to listen to that little voice...as my hubby had grumbled at me taking her out of the carrier.

he NEVER secondguessed my gut feelings again. (miss satan is 25 now and contemplating perhaps having a little one of her own someday. that's entirely cool.)

(Reply to this)

	fpb 2008-03-30 05:32 am UTC (link)
	One of the most beautiful and moving posts I ever read. I will place a link in my LJ. (Reply to this)

	asakiyume 2008-03-30 12:43 pm UTC (link)
	Here via fpb (though I usually run into you on sartorias's page. That was a lovely, lovely story, and inspiring. Thank you for sharing it with the world. (Reply to this)

sneakingyoda
2008-03-30 04:53 pm UTC (link)

*nods* I too, like many others above me on this page, have taken personal injury instead of allowing any injury happening to a baby.

Stairs, like many- it was one of the few times I was allowed to hold the son of a very good family friend of mine. And as I walked over carefully to join my family in watching a game of frizbee in the front yard, my shoelace was unknowingly untied.

What I remember of it is terrifying clarity. A moment trying to correct balance- failing. My feet can't move because one was pinned down by the other from the shoelace. After that the next thought wasn't so much how to land- but how I could protect the baby from landing.

I ended up twisting, turning and reaching my arms out with the baby to gently pass him- like handing a football, to the person who was nearest by. He didn't even wake up. (he wasn't airborne, it was a hand off)

I had ten people looking at me stunned- and I had scraped up all sorts of various parts of me that wouldn't of been hurt otherwise. And I was mortified for falling- I felt awful. It wasn't my kid- I was expecting to get flayed alive. Ended up that they still talk about it every once and awhile, they were really proud of that fall.

I'm just glad I didn't sustain any additional serious injury, because when it came down to the choice- there was no choice. I could of broken anything- it was a face first plant down ten or so steps.

(Reply to this)

dark_blade
2008-03-30 06:13 pm UTC (link)

I had something similar happen with my baby brother.. twice, actually. Fell down five stairs and managed to land with him on top of me, another time I jammed my knee and sprained my ankle sprinting after him while in the front yard when he tried to chase something out into traffic. Once though, I didn't make the catch.

I remember playing with my eldest younger brother (not the one I mentioned above) on one of those brightly colored plastic indoor/outdoor preschooler playsets. Y'know, they look like a 4-5' cube with no top or bottom, there's a ledge halfway up inside and a slide.

He was about three, (putting me around 13) and I was playing peek-a-boo, and he found it so funny that he laughed and wouldn't stop. I was trying to get him to settle down again when he took a step back.. and there was no more ledge. I was standing outside of it and couldn't get my hands up and over the wall fast enough to catch him. He fell, and made a startled sound as he hit the ground on his back. I instinctively scooped him up while he still had that O_O look, quelling my OMG reaction and tickled him lightly, exclaiming "Woah, that was quite a fall!" and trying to hit that pitch you do when a kid's fallen but not really hurt, and raises a fit because mommy/daddy/someone is having one.

He seemed okay for a few seconds.. whew, it worked, okay. Let's go for a story and a sitting activity--then he started to arch his back. "Joseph, what're you doing silly? C'mon, sit straight." I got him straight again, and a moment later he did it again, and he wasn't looking at me, and the movement had a spastic feel. I kept trying to get his attention and started hollaring for my father and stepmother, and I realized that the way he was when I picked him up, he had probably hit his head. And I had MOVED him. By time he came up to chew me out for screaming "GET UP HERE RIGHT NOW!" Joseph was arching harder and as I passed him over, his eyes rolled back in his head.

9-1-1 was called, and he finally started to come around again.. we asked him about colors and numbers and letters all the way to the hospital. This hadn't been too long before bedtime, and the ER at the children's hospital was backed up. Keeping him awake was a challenge, and I was in a feckton of trouble for immediately picking him up. Fortunately he was fine, but that was a very scary night.

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	stokerbramwell 2008-03-30 10:59 pm UTC (link)
	Gads, you're an amazing mother. I've just gotta say it. (Reply to this)

	dnellin 2008-03-31 12:05 am UTC (link)
	You've just realized--you'll be a mother until the "baby" is 95, and there'll be a number of heart stopping moments along the way. Glad you two weathered this one relatively well, and may the rest of them turn out as successfully. Being a Mom is hard and scary work--but oh, so heart warming. (Reply to this)

	headnoises 2008-03-31 02:52 am UTC (link)
	My mother's littlest baby is 23 years old and works with the Navy SEALs. She STILL has trouble sleeping, and every so often I'll get a random call for "no reason" that I'm 90% sure is her making sure I'm alive and well. No idea if you care, but I'll pray for you in your most important cause. (Reply to this)

	arhyalon 2008-03-31 06:21 pm UTC (link)
	God, that's so beautiful. It made me cry. It also reminded me of the strange and wonderful day when my then-two year old little golden cherib fell down our cement stairs and, by the grace of God, my sweet but normally very slow moving neighbor caught him. She just reached out and caught him before his head slammed into the cement. God bless! (Reply to this)(Thread)

	haikujaguar 2008-03-31 10:34 pm UTC (link)
	Thank you, and to thee as well. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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