"Daddy...Kiss It!"

Never before could I have imagine the amount of pain and fear a child can inflict on you, before I became a father. This was never more obvious than when, one fateful night, me and my tearful wife drove my, at the time, one and a half-year-old son to the emergency room with a big white gauze wrapped around the top of his head.

It was a normal Sunday evening and we had just said good-bye to my wife's parents, who had been over for the evening visiting us. It was late, about 8:30pm, and my wife announced to my son it's time for bed. Acting upon his tireless ways, he decides to try to start running and laughing around the table (very cute at the time). I then decide to indulge his bedtime rebellion by getting on my hands and knees and chasing him. Everyone is laughing, smiling, great family moment, and in an instant it all changed. Still not an expert with just two legs under him, my son trips and goes headfirst into the tall, window sill ledge causing a gash right below my son's right eyebrow that, at the time, looked like the Grand Canyon filling up with Kool-Aid. My wife, in hysteria, starts ripping me new one for my lack of judgment, while scurrying to find a rag to get pressure on the fresh wound . All the while our son is crying, we panicked and call the EMS. By the time they arrived our son had stopped crying and was more annoyed by us holding the rag on his head the crater underneath it.They took on look at it and told us there was no real reason for them to take him in, so they wrapped his head in gauze for us and we were off to the emergency room.

When we got to the emergency room , things didn't exactly improve for us right away. It took a good 20 min. to even get back to see the doctors. Then while we're back in the exam room we can hear and see EMS guys bringing in some absolutely drunk, belligerent guy right into the room next to us. He's in there screaming an cussing, banging on his exam room table. Finally there was a nice enough nurse that moved us across the room. When the doctor came in she took a few looks at and basically says "Yea well okay we'll just stitch it up.". Like it's no big deal? Look at the size of that gash! But then after awhile I stopped to think "just think of what she's seen before! I'm sure that this is nothing to her!" So basically she stitched him up, we took him home and gained a new level of fear for the safety of my child.

As soon as he was born, I gained a fear the I wasn't aware I would have to deal with when I became a father. Worrying about the safety of your child can be about as exhausting an attribute of parenting as any. One thing I've learned though, as a lot of parents have I'm sure, is that most times you you can't prevent all bad things from happening to your kids, it just won't happen. Trust me after his accident I believed that I was going to always be there to catch him if he fell again. It's nearly impossible without fitting him with full catcher's gear. So instead of being there to catch him when he physically falls, I feel it's more important to be there to console him after the fall. A parents hug and kiss seems to go so far in the minds of our kids. I personally know that I won't always be there to catch my son, but I will always be there when he says "Daddy...kiss it"