6 or a Half Dozen Stitches?

Growling echoed across the house and within my heart like a bad dream on repeat; I knew Chas was on top of the dog somehow and when I ran into the room, there he was, just like I imagined. Three years ago, Ford was in this same position when Seti snapped, scarring his cheek. This time, I whisked Chas off the ailing dog and flew out of the room. And on the way, looking back at Seti, I ran us into the corner of a door.

If you’ve never watched your child’s head bleed, you’ve never experienced that unhinged, piquant surreality of blood everywhere, coming from everywhere on your child’s head at once, struggling to find it’s source in the pulsing flow of it all, onto the floor, soaking your clothes, his hair, his entire face, while trying to find your keys, trying to find your purse, and shoes for each child and a rag and a cellfone and, in my case, my sanity. You don’t understand how it is possible for such a small child to leave such an extensive trail of bloodsplats from corner to corner in the house as you run in circles, looking for all your missing pieces.

But we spent some quality time connecting with other parents in the ER, watching in amazement as Chas threw spinning arcs with an inflatable football across the waiting room to a new friend from Amsterdam. And as he sat still under the tired fluorescent lights in triage while the plastic surgeon stitched his perfectly positioned 2.5 cm glabellar lesion (with special-order blue Proline thread! He was very impressed), I was able to sing with him and smile and nod that this may very well be the first of many such visits, and that this one (despite being of my fault and not his, and given his physical exuberances) was certainly overdue.