You’ve all seen The Christmas Story, right? So you know that the title of this post refers to Ralphie’s mom’s refusal to buy him a BB gun for Christmas, on the grounds that it’s too dangerous, that he’ll certainly cause himself horrifying and irreversible bodily harm if he so much as touches the gun he so desperately wants. The movie wants us to view Ralphie’s mom’s fear as irrational and ridiculous, and until very recently, I did. I thought it was silly when my mom wanted me to call to let her know I arrived somewhere safely, or when Will’s mom reminded us to be “safe and sensible,” or when my cousin’s mom asked him to call to let her know we had made it two blocks up the hill to my house.
In the last few months, though, roughly coinciding with Thomas’ sudden and shocking mobility, I have started to identify much less with Ralphie and much more with his mom, with my mom, with Will’s mom, with Hunter’s mom. In short: I am constantly and thoroughly terrified that Thomas will come to serious physical harm.
My fears range from worries about small, everyday dangers (what if he slips while chewing on that toy and falls on it in such a way that he punctures the roof of his mouth) to rare but enormous ones (what if I slip and fall on this wet pavement while holding him and he incurs a serious head injury?). They range from these kinds of physical dangers to more emotional ones (does my stress about this dissertation incapacitate me as a parent?). And they range from fears about things that could happen right now to things that might happen to him far down the road (what if there’s a crazy school shooter on his college campus some day?). To round this out, of course, there’s all the stuff any parent can’t help but hear about SIDS, autism, flu pandemics, abductions, and so on.
One of my current obsessive fears is that he’ll fall down our stairs and smash his head open. I can be sitting in my office, working on my dissertation, knowing that Thomas is safely at his sitter’s house, and this fear can hit me so hard I feel like throwing up. Last week I actually called Will to remind him to make sure the door was shut and the gate was up as soon as he and Thomas got home, which was going to happen three hours later. Logically, I know that Will won’t let him fall down the stairs. But part of me feels like somehow it could happen while I’m watching him, and if it could happen to me, then it could happen to anyone.
The worry I obsessed about for a number of hours today is Shaken Baby Syndrome. Don’t get the wrong idea; I didn’t shake my baby. I know that you should never, ever, shake a baby. But this morning when I was trying to feed my very squirmy little guy, he stood up on my lap and then, as I was holding him with both hands around his belly, he pushed off with his legs so hard that he launched himself into the air and backwards. Still holding him around the waist, I had to jerk him back just a little bit to keep him from slipping out and falling to the floor below.
He just smiled and laughed. He didn’t seem to be in pain, didn’t look funny or get lethargic or anything, but as it happened I thought, wow, the way his head jerked back just a little bit must be sort of what it’s like for a baby who gets shaken. I kept an eye on him for the next hour and a half (until I dropped him off at the sitter), and he behaved perfectly normally. He ate his food, he squirmed and played and resisted his diaper change. He cuddled only for a second here or there and then went on with his baby business, just like he does every day. And still, I continued silently freaking out for many hours, looking up symptoms on the internet, wondering if it’s possible that I did serious damage to my baby’s brain while trying to prevent a fall, a fall that could have happened despite the fact that I never took my hands off him.
And the fact is, these days I rarely take my hands off him. Whenever he’s awake, I’m basically glued to him, ready to catch him when he hurls his body this way or that, when he falls forward into the bookshelf/floor/table while reaching for something (dangerous) that he wants, when he tries once again to rip out part of the dog’s beard, and so on.
But the problem is, as in The Christmas Story, some of the things little guys can do really are dangerous and can really cause harm no matter how much somebody’s mom tries to prevent it. Ralphie is just lucky he’s wearing glasses when he goes outside to shoot the BB gun, or else he would indeed lose his eye when the BB ricochets back towards him. And Thomas is constantly falling, smacking his head, tripping, slipping, etc., no matter how close to him I stay. Man, it’s maddening and terrifying at the same time.
I am just about 100% sure that I didn’t actually do any damage to Thomas this morning. He’s been completely normal all day. But just about sure isn’t always doing it for me these days. No matter how clearly safe he seems, the worry can, at times, be all consuming and incapacitating for hours on end. I know I just have to let it go, to get used to it and realize that this kind of worrying isn’t going to go away. It’s just going to morph into worrying about bullies or about paying for college or about drinking and driving or about the babies he’ll hopefully have someday.
All of which is to say, I guess, that while I wouldn’t give any of it up for a million zillion worlds full of sailboats and margaritas and lounging on the beach, this parenting thing is once again blowing my mind and kicking my butt.
