Stories Make Life Shine: Pain

I’m only paces behind my young son when he steps onto a footstool next to the sink of our hotel room. I watch, helpless—too far away to catch him but close enough to witness it—as the stool instantly slips out from under him, sending him sprawling backward. The full weight of his body falls on the back of his head, while the tiled room echoes a loud “crack.”

Blood is instantly smeared across the white tile and on his searching fingers. I reach for a white hand towel and press his small head to my chest, applying pressure with the towel to the wound.

“You’re okay, Trenton.” My voice feels loud and hallow in that cold bathroom, and I think I can literally feel the knot swelling under the towel. “We’ll just wait for Daddy to get back. He’ll be here any minute.”

My husband is parking the car. We’d only just arrived.

Chase, our two-year-old, circles his brother and I, repeating, “Trenton. Fall down. Doctor.”

Without warning I am a child again, and my mom is holding me much like I would later hold my son. I remember her saying she wished she could experience the pain for me. I never understood that.

Until now.

* “Stories Make Life Shine” is a series of personal essays in which I get to take a break from playing commentator and try my hand at playing writer. For one entry, I write in present tense and try to capture the scene. I’m share them here partly to inspire you to write your own life vignettes from time to time—and partly just to keep nurturing the writer in me. The point of writing personal vignettes is to keep them short and not labor over them to the point of losing your love for it. Thank you for reading!

* Last thing – Thank you all so much for the facebook likes this week!