Most days I go through with this numbness. Its like that calm errieness before a storm. Once in a while, my thoughts that I try so hard to keep on other things, the T.V., the computer, slip through to places I avoid. No one likes to afflict pain on themselves of this magnitude so I dont feel so guilty when I purposely avoid it. But try as I may, my mind roams. He ran his tricycle down the stairs. Ended up with 6 stitches. I think of all the times I hid the cleaning supplys, covered electrical outlets so he would be safe. And the time he got in a fight while protected someone even smaller than himself from bullys at school. He came home suspended with a bruised and bloody face so I took him for icecream and told him he'd done the right thing. Sitting in the operating room waiting area. Praying his surgery would go well. It did. These were my rights! They were my privileges. Well there are no more skinned knees. There are nightmares of a black car pulling up...the men clad in Army dress garb coming to the door. There are no more 104 fevers at 3am. There are news reports of suicide bombers who think life is a usless comodity, and praying that one of the two soldiers killed is not him. There are no more report cards. There are only chats online with him, and his occasional phone calls home. I reflect on all the childhood problems that seem so huge, so complicated. Now I realize how small and how wonderful they were. I think of all the things I fixed. "I" fixed. I cant fix this. I cant even begin to understand what hes going through, I cant protect him. Some would say "hes a grown man". I beg to differ! Hes my child! Hes playing a game of war where the worst that can happen is not a skinned knee or breaking the arm off his G.I.Joe doll. And all I can seem to do is put this in the back of my head so I dont sit crouched in the corner like a wounded animal hating the world for this pain in my heart. And I have to wonder...Does he have any idea how I feel? Does he know my love stretches around this horrible world we live in and though I cant protect him hes never alone? I miss skinned knees.
