Strike!

“You need a cold pack on your lips. You hurt yourself. It will make it feel better, I promise.”

“That won’t feel me better!"

“You can put this cold pack on your face or you can eat a Popsicle.”

“That is not the only choices!” Jeremy screams dropping to the floor in his customary tantrum.

“Ooh, we have a lot of Popsicles,” I purr. “Look, Mommy and Johnny are eating some,” I say shoving a red Popsicle into my older son’s mouth. John eyes me wearily, as if being forced to eat a Popsicle is a chore.

Jeremy waddles over disoriented from the tremendous whack to the head with a huge purple and bloodied upper lip. John and I chomp on our Popsicles trying not to look alarmed.

“I wanna ye-yo un,” he says reaching dangerously overhead into the freezer.

“Ok, ok back off there head injury. I’ll see if we have any yellow.”

His speech is slurred by his growing upper lip. There are no yellow, only red and purple.

“Jeremy, look here is a purple or a red one. Johnny has red, right John. Mmmm…” John peers from the kitchen chair with his eight year old enough look.

Well, at least it will help camouflage the bruise.

I sit him down on the chair to look at his lip and see if it
is bleeding where his teeth must have penetrated. There is a vertical bruise where the bat connected perfectly on his upper lip and tip of his nose. I wonder how many more near hits I’ll be granted before we end up in the emergency room for stitches.

At birth Jeremy had arrived loud and fearless. On an almost daily basis he has continued to be lucky. At only three he has done some crazy things that I can only hope are meant to toughen my resolve and strengthen me so that I am prepared for his teenage years.

He has run into closed glass doors, hit his head on the corners of everything from car doors to tables, run face first into walls rushing to get somewhere because he so rarely walks. He has jumped or fallen from most area playground equipment and chairs of restaurants. He has matching scars at the corner of each eye that everyone insists gives his face character, but I only see as permanent damage, notes taken on my inability to control this little man.

This latest addition to the head injury Hall of Fame was by far the most unexpected. Taking practice swings in our backyard behind me with his plastic Little Slugger he wound up repeatedly and pretended to hit homeruns. I reminded him again not to stand so close to me or he would get hit with my bat. With each reminder he would step back next to the plastic Fisher Price playhouse and wind up again. Impatiently waiting his turn.

A loud bang and howling scream made me drop my bat and sent John running. Jeremy had his mouth covered with his hands, blood seeping through his parted fingers. He was screaming with a pitch I’d never heard.

“It’s OK, OK, OK, OK,” I held him and patted his back trying to figure out how he had hurt himself so badly right behind us. But that was how it went. He was right behind me, next to me, within reach and I could never catch, stop, block or hold him enough to prevent injury.

John was Jeremy’s older brother and often narrator to his deeds. John had seen Jeremy raise the bat over his head and bring it down on the roof of the playhouse. It had hit so hard that it bounced straight back into his face. John suggested he will one day be an MIP, Most Injured Player.

With blood, snot, and red Popsicle now dripping onto his once white tee shirt and his upper lip so swollen it looked like a balloon sitting on a Popsicle stick, Jeremy asked, “Ca I vat now?”

John and I made eye contact and slowly shook our heads,“No.”