Eaten Alive

I dare say that every single parent of every single toddler on earth has at some point helplessly watched while said toddler took a hard fall or crashed into a door or walked off the side of a porch or swallowed a dog treat or shoved a grape up their nose. If you're a parent, you've been there ... you're right there with them and you just can't get to them quickly enough to keep them from getting hurt. Toddlers are a unique breed, you know ... they are fearless ... they are quick ... they are sneaky ... and most important, they are a million times smarter than the rest of us. There's no other feeling on earth quite like the helplessness a parent feels when they are within arm's reach of their toddler and just can't quite grab them before they get hurt. I remember it well ... that feeling of seeing one of my little ones heading right for danger and not being able to do one thing to stop them from the injury I knew was about to happen.

Last Monday, Matt and Becca were within inches of my granddaughter C.J. when she went running across the room intending to jump onto a pile of pillows ... something, I might add, that she's probably done a thousand times before. Instead of landing in the pillows, however, C.J. went flying over the top of the pillows and crashed nose first into the basement wall ... suffice it to say that her nose wasn't broken, but she does sort of look a bit like Rocky Balboa after one of his more difficult title matches. When we Skyped on Saturday, she showed me her nose and told me in vivid detail about her visit to the doctor who looked up her nose with a "wight" and how brave she was. Bless her little heart, to add insult to injury, Saturday morning at the market she got stung by "da bundlebee, Ghee ... no bundlebee stinged me on my cheek right here." Again I say, bless her sweet little heart ... my poor baby girl had a rough week. Little does she know that her nose mishap and the bundlebee incident were every bit as painful for her mom and dad as they were for her ... and then some. 

It was barely light by the time Ollie and I got home from our walk this evening, which means the days are getting shorter and it won't be long until I'll be driving home from work each evening in the dark. Though I didn't notice it while I was walking, when I sat down on the couch once I got home, it only took a moment for me to realize that something was most definitely not right with my legs. From my knees down, my legs were itching and burning like crazy ... no, seriously ... they were itching and burning like they were on fire. Me being the highly rational person that I am, I immediately grabbed a flashlight and headed into the bathroom to check out what most definitely had to be some sort of zombie mutated infection that had attacked my legs while I walked on the trail ... because of course I had unknowingly stepped into a puddle of zombie ooze as I walked. What? Isn't that what you would think if you had been walking outside and came home and your legs were itching and burning? Don't lie ... of course you would ... every intelligent, rational, sane person on the planet would think that zombies and their ooze had to be to blame.

It turns out that I may possibly have jumped to the wrong conclusion about the zombies' role in my leg discomfort ... unless ... wait a sec ... I bet those stupid zombies somehow infested the hoard of mosquitoes that had obviously feasted upon my legs as I walked. Yep, upon further flashlight-aided inspection, I discovered about a thousand mosquito bites on my legs ... well ... those 11 bites felt like a thousand anyway. I'm sure you'll be glad to know, however, that a good dousing with clear fingernail polish did wonders for the itching and burning. Just in case, though, I think I may activate my anti-zombies that take over the bodies of mosquitoes alarm system before I turn in for the night ... you can never be too cautious when it comes to mosquito-inhabited zombies ... duh.

So what in the world do my mosquito bites have to do with my intro about my little C.J.? Sometimes stuff just happens to us that is outside of our control ... sometimes that stuff happens even when you've got people watching over you. Sometimes you're running too fast and you misjudge the distance and you crash into the wall and bonk your nose. Sometimes you get stung by the bundlebees or bitten by the mosquitoes, and you never saw them coming and probably couldn't have stopped them even if you had. We're all going to fall, and we're all going to get stung and bitten ... the secret is in not letting the walls and the bugs win. C.J. didn't stay on the floor after her encounter with the wall, and I didn't try to ignore the bites on my legs. My baby girl got up and let her mom and dad hold her and help her ... I applied clear fingernail polish to every single bite to soothe the itching and stop the burning. 

See here's the thing, friends ... the huge lesson for me (and maybe some of you as well) is that there will always be walls, and there will always be bundlebees and mosquitoes in life, and there will be times when I crash nose-first and get eaten alive. But ... but ... but ... I have to get up when I fall ... I have to let the people who love me help me to heal ... I have to trust that the swelling and pain will leave the stings, and the itching and burning will subside on the bites. Funny how so very many things come back to that trust thing, eh? Funny ... funny indeed.