Don has taught Clayton to play Hide and Seek. Don covers his eyes and counts to ten, and Clayton scurries, giggling, into the kitchen cabinet which Dee Dee has taught him is a fun place to hide. It is the only place he ever hides, even when Don tries to show him some other options.
"Find me!" he yells from inside the cabinet, and Don makes a show of looking for him. It is very, very cute.
On Friday night the two of them were playing after the girls had gone to bed; I had just sat down at the kitchen table with the New Yorker after a long week of childcare. Don hid behind the kids' bathroom door, and when Clayton found him, he shrieked with laughter. I held my breath, and sure enough, seconds later Dee Dee started crying. I should have left her, I wish I'd left her-- she is pretty good at going to sleep herself. But I was worried she would wake Sylvia, who is not so good, so I brought Dee Dee out to the living room. I held her for a while, but she seemed content to crawl and play, so I sat down again, thinking I'd give her a few minutes before trying to put her down again.
Suddenly, she was screaming. When I looked up, she was holding on, with one hand, to the screen that surrounds the wood-burning stove. The screen gets warm, but never hot, and my first thought was that something must have made her mad. She is a determined climber, and is easily infuriated when the world is not immediately accessible to her. But no-- my worst fears about the stove had just been realized. She had somehow managed to touch the stove, although the screen was still in place and she was on the safe side of it. I scooped her up and looked at her hands, and, oh God, there it was-- an awful white stripe down her index finger and another white oval on the fingertip of her middle finger. I rushed her to the kitchen sink and ran cool water from the hose over her hand while she ate a graham cracker with the other. Like that, she was all right-- my brave little girl-- but when we attempted to bandage her hand, she started wailing again.
Do I even need to describe how awful I felt? My baby in pain, from something I could have prevented but could not undo. My worst fears of parenting are medical disasters. Even before I had given birth to my children, I was already dreading the midnight trips to the emergency room, the 105 degree fevers that wouldn't subside, the freak accidents. What if I didn't do the right thing? What if I was paralyzed with fear? My worst childhood memory is when my thirteen-year-old older sister came home early from a weekend at Girl Scout camp. She couldn't pee, and the leaders had encouraged her to drink cup after cup of water, thinking, perhaps, that my sister (of all people!) just had qualms about peeing in the woods. She was in agony, writhing around on her bedroom floor. It turned out she had a three and a half pound ovarian cyst which was blocking her urethra. She is fine--even with only one ovary she quickly conceived her two sons--, and I wonder if the memory of those moments before my parents took her to the hospital haunt her as they haunt me. I was eleven at the time, and my sense of powerlessness in the face of my sister's suffering has never left me.
Two burned fingers are not, I know, a medical emergency. Still, I was tempted to take Dee Dee to the emergency room, mostly out of selfishness. I wanted someone else to be responsible for taking care of her pain. I wanted to follow orders from a professional, not decide myself what we should do. Dee Dee pulled at the bandage with her good hand, ripped at it with her new teeth. "Get this thing off of me!" she screamed. I couldn't tell anymore if her cries were from the pain of the burn, anger at the indignity of the bandage, or exhaustion at being up past her bedtime; probably, it was a combination of all three. We gave her the baby ibuprofen that I'd recently bought for teething pain, but she spit out most of the first dose. When I lay down to nurse her in bed, hoping to coax her to sleep, she opened her mouth against my nipple and howled, writhing away from me in the bed. I tried nursing her in the rocker in her room, but Sylvia stirred and whimpered in her bed when she heard her sister's screams. I paced with her in the bedroom, singing endless rounds of "Twinkle Twinkle," but she would not be consoled. In desperation I tried lying her down in her Pack-n-Play in our room, hoping she would soon cry herself to sleep.
"We'll give her ten minutes," Don said, but after five, or three, I went back in. She had pulled the bandage most of the way off her hand. Only the tape was still attached. I knew the burn probably hurt more exposed to the air, but I was almost relieved to have it off, since it clearly pissed her off so much. I tried the rocker again, called for Don to take Sylvia when she woke. I rocked, patted, sang, nursed, rocked, patted, sang, nursed... After a while, the screaming stopped, although her little body still jolted rhythmically in my arms with silent, gasping sobs. When she had finally quieted, I rocked her still, holding her close.
Again, words won't really do the feeling justice. There is no worse feeling than not having protected my babies from pain, unless it is not being able to console them. With Dee Dee finally asleep in my arms, I felt overcome with relief, tenderness, concern. I wanted to hold her forever, wanted there never to be a time when she would not fit so securely in my arms, would not find such comfort in my breast, my presence, my love.
I finally lay her down. She stirred but didn't wake, and I went out to find Don playing with Sylvia on the couch. My breasts felt deflated and empty, but I took Sylvia to bed to nurse anyway, taking comfort in the ease with which I could comfort her, the familiar feel of her body, pain-free, against mine.
In the middle of the night, Sylvia woke again, and although we have been trying, a little, to limit the number of night nursings, that night I felt only tenderness when I brought her to my breast. This time, when the comfort I can offer is so complete, is fleeting, and that night it felt far more precious than a night of uninterrupted sleep.
Usually I take Sylvia back to her crib once she has nursed. We both sleep better, and longer, when in our own beds. But over an hour had passed when I woke again to find her still beside me, her head lodged securely in my armpit, her body pressed against mine. She sighed when I lifted her and carried her back to bed, only stirring slightly when I lay her in her crib. Dee Dee still slept peacefully, bottom in the air; she hadn't moved, it seemed, since I lay her down, and I felt a surge of love for both my sleeping little girls.
I tiptoed past Clayton's room, and it seemed to me that my love for my children emanated from me, that it was a physical presence that permeated the very air they breathed. In the living room, my old dog Dulce lay stretched out on the bed near our door. She didn't stir as I passed, and I felt relief that in sleep she, too, was safe from the relentless pain of the lump on her head.
I climbed back in bed, the sheets still warm, and curled up against Don. I would have done anything to protect Dee Dee from that suffering, to have spent a normal evening in front of the fire, watching the West Wing with Don and eating ice cream. But Dee Dee would be okay, I knew, and, in the quiet of the night, I felt content, grateful for how safe they all were in sleep, blessed by how my immense love for them all could fill the night.
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