“Could you grab me a paper towel?” my husband called from
the baby’s room.
I was annoyed, because I was in the middle of cleaning up
the kitchen and he does have arms and legs that function just fine, last time I
checked.
My huffy demeanor quickly dissipated, however, when I walked
in, paper towel in hand, and my son was bleeding. More specifically, he had a
split over his right eye and the beginning of a good shiner.
My husband seemed completely unaffected, smiling away as he
dried our son off from bath time and prepped a diaper and pajama outfit. My
reaction was just a little different — just a tiny bit.
“What happened?” I cried.
“What? This?” my husband said, as he started dabbing the
blood away from the offending cut. “He jumped in the tub, fell and cut his
eye.”
I stared at my husband incredulously. He was acting as if
this was no big deal.
“You could have said something,” I said. I was trying to get
my stomach back to its rightful place after dropping to the floor.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” he said.
I could have throttled him. Didn’t he know that this was my
baby? Didn’t he understand how serious this was?
There’s a distinct difference between men and women in terms
of their reaction to injuries. I want to call in the National Guard; he wants
to rub some dirt in it and walk it off.
Both approaches are a bit ridiculous, so I can only hope our
children will learn to find some middle ground in our extreme approaches.
The following day, the bruise was big, but it didn’t look
like our son needed medical attention.
My husband seemed disappointed.
“I was hoping that his first shiner would be a little more
noticeable,” he said.
I was just thankful that the yearly daycare pictures were
three days earlier.
— Sarah Leach is editor of The Holland Sentinel.
Contact her at (616) 546-4278 or sarah.leach@hollandsentinel.com.
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