Thursday, July 31, 2008

Back From Camp

V was the first of the delinquents to attend summer camp this year. He left last Monday and everything was going great....until the last night. I received the phone call at 9:00 pm. When Camp Wapsie showed up on the caller ID my heart sank. It couldn't be good. I answered and a very nice nurse introduced herself.

"V fell down at the dance. He has a goose egg on his his, has a bloody nose and some scrapes on his face. We have checked for a concussion and think he is ok. We are going to go ahead and keep him but just wanted to let you know what happened." she said in the calmest of ways.

"OK...so he is ok. You will call if he gets worse, right?" I said that as calmly as possible all the time FREAKING out. "Can I please speak to him?" I was put on hold FOREVER or maybe a couple of minutes...no one can be sure of these things.

"Hello," said the weak, frail, weeping voice on the other end. My heart melted.

"Hey buddy how ya doing? What happened?"

The sobbing increased and what I heard thru the sobs and sniffles broke my heart into a million, trillion, no gazillion little peices. "I want blankeeeeeeeey."

After I swept the peices of my heart up and got him to calm down a bit he told me what happened. He was swinging on a couple of support posts in the tennis court and went to jump off backwards (a gymnastics move). His foot landed wrong and he fell forward on to his face. And he informed me, "It hurts bad mommy." Did you hear the gazillion pieces shatter on the ground?

We agreed he would stay the night. The nurse said he would have an attendent for a while and we hung up the phones.

We had to be at camp at 9:00 the next morning to pick him up. This was the first glimsp I had of him.

I couldn't tell if he was hurt, tired, bored or deeply depressed. All I knew is he didn't look good.

After he was released to his guardians (us) we got a closer look. The goose egg was the size of a chicken egg...an extra large one. It was scabbed over, his eye was a little swollen, he had a couple of scrapes and I sucked in my breath trying not to say, OH MY GOD...COME HERE MY LITTLE BABY BOY AND LET MAMA KISS IT ALL BETTER," in front of his friends. It was hard, I mean real hard.

The next morning he looked like this.

It looked like someone beat the crap out of my sweet, innocent middling child, the fruit of my loin, the eater of my food, the name sake to my grandpa...MY BABY!

The next day he looked a bit better. You can see the bruising starting.

Today he is looking pretty good. His goose egg is down to about a robin egg size and he is smiling. Kids heal so fast. And the moral of the story? We don't do gymnastics moves on an asphalt tennis court because there is a reason why there are 4 inch mats in the gym where gymnastics are supposed to be done! Ain't he handsome?

© 2008 The Homefront Lines

2 comments:

Frankie said...

Ouch!!!

And oh my gosh, Thomas leaves for summer camp Sunday. I think I'll have him read this entry. lol

Unknown said...

Oh my goodness. The picture is way different than what you told me!

I am glad that he is better.