I'm a worrier. It's helped me along through life. I didn't sleep around for fear of contracting AIDS and dying. I didn't stand up to the girl that stole my walkman in the 7th grade because I thought she would come after me with her gang and shank me to death. I didn't sky dive or bungee jump. I didn't lean against window screens or rest the entirety of my weight against weather-worn wooden balconies for fear they would collapse and I would plummet to my death.
Safe to say, I was a chicken shit and my chicken-shittery has led to loss of life in other ways-- a topic of conversation filled with pathetic regret and best saved for someone who has to listen to me, like my mother. Or a hooker.
My fear of life and all the things that could potentially go wrong, took a turn for the obsessive after motherhood. I cried when I got home after Mila was born. Maybe because I was flooded with hormones and sedatives but mostly because as I watched this tiny little bundle sleep, my first thought was, "Oh My God, what if she dies?"
I couldn't. I just couldn't. The thought...to even fathom it. It was too much...It is too much.
Eight years later, she's still here. She managed to go through it all with only minor injuries: a schnauzer bite to the face, a nearly amputated pinky toe due to stroller mishandling, repeated cheese grater scrapes to the knees, shins, and elbows...
She's growing though, and each day she says something wiser and behaves more boldly. Living in the Singapore safety buubble, my little immobile larva has metamorphosed. Her first solo flight was a half a block walk to her guitar lesson which gave her the confidence to cross the street to the grocery store which culminated where we are today: riding the bus alone.
Every time I let her go, my mind works itself up into a frenzy thinking about all the things that could happen on the short 6 minute ride between home and gymnastics.
She always hugs me after I drop her off at class. She kisses me and tells me she loves me. That's the cue for my paranoid thoughts.
What if she misses her stop, gets off, nervous and worried and asks the wrong person for help? No, that sort of thing doesn't happen in Singapore.
Traffic. If anything were to happen to her it would be traffic. People drive like maniacs. The bus could wreck and I she could see her flying across the seats. Someone could hit her and her little body, although strong from gymnastics would not be strong enough to withstand the weight of a car rolling over her. An eight-year-old child is no match for asphalt and metal.
What would happen to my life? Would I be a bawling mess indefinitely? Would my marriage fall apart as they say most marriages do after the loss of a child? At what point would I go in her room and box up her things? Would I keep them? Would I invite her friends over and ask them to pick something to remember her by?
Enough. That's enough of that.
I push the pedestrian crossing button and I stand there waiting for it to turn green. The jaywlkers move forward.
I continue waiting. Hoping I don't have to wait for the bus long so I can go home and nap. The light turns green and I'm in the zebra; cars whizzing by on my left so they can make that right turn without having to wait the thirty seconds it takes for the digital green man to halt.
I see vehicles doing this every time I cross that road and I always stop at the median to let their impatient asses go. Yeah, I know I have the right-of-way but I would not stand against steel to make this point.
So, I pause, turning my head left to see if there are any impatient assholes and --vroom. There he was. Inches from me. His turn was too narrow. I reacted, jumping back, my hands up in defence. My jump was far enough to avoid the side of the bonnet against my knees, but not far enough to miss my hands. My knuckles cracked and push back into the closest they've ever been to ninety degrees as they made contact with the hood of the taxi; his forward motion spinning me in a horrendous pirouette on my flip-flops. The car is warm under my hands.
I've imagined this scenario before and in it I jump spidey-style onto the hood of car, curse the driver, and will forever be known as the ninja mom in the viral video. I'd be awarded for Best All-Around Collision. Instead, I'm spun around like a wayward top and my forehead whiplashes onto the curb.
I remember in the instant between impact and hitting the curb, one thought flashed into my mind. It was advice given by a friend so long ago that I forgot who gave it to me. It was advice handed down to her by her mother regarding walking in high heels which said "When walking in high heels and you are about to fall, just let yourself go. Women always injures themselves when they try to avoid the fall."
Perhaps I'm an asshole for not thinking about my family instead.
But since I was in the middle of falling, this seemed like practical thought. I let the car swing me around and landed on my bicep which had been getting pretty ripped as I've been working out. My elbow was scraped and bruised for a week. But there was nothing I could do about my head. As soon as my forehead hit the curb I remember telling myself to stay awake.
I rolled over on all fours and that's when gravity let the blood flow from inside my head, where it had recently been circulating, and out through the new opening in my body.
It hit the pavement with such a splash and weighed down on my eyelashes obstructing my view--which in my heightened state of panic I thought a flap of forehead skin was hanging down over my eye.
The driver jumped out of his car and asked what he should do.
"Call an ambulance! CALL AN AMBULANCE. Please!"
"What's the number?"
I thought of that schtick from The Little Rascals when the clubhouse is burning down and Buckwheat asks for the number for 9-1-1. A bystander helped him out while I looked for something other than my hand to stop the bleeding.
My hat was a few inches from me. I never thought that when my sister found that hat in a coffee shop garbage can roughly 25 years ago, I would use it to put pressure against a head wound.
I crawled to the median and sat with the poly-blend pageboy cap pressed against my head. I focused on my breathing. Focused on staying awake. My eyes darted from the puddle of blood to my sunglasses. Puddle of blood. Sunglasses. I picked them up and put them in my bag. They weren't broken.
The driver gave me paper towels and instructed me to put my head up. I sneered, my face covered in blood. People who hit other people with cars should refrain from giving advice.
The police arrived. The ambulance arrived. I answered questions and with the help of bystanders and the receptionists at my daughter's gym I arranged for her to be picked up while I was carted away in my first ever ambulance ride.
While in the ER, I got a lot of stares and when I went to the bathroom the mirror reflected a very tired mother with blood smeared all over her face. The little girl next to the sink hid behind her grandmother. Her grandmother looked at me, mouth open.
"Taxi," I said. She nodded, her mouth shaped into the universal response for "oh damn."Two hours later, my turn came. Local anaesthetic. The doctor put a gloved finger into my gash and felt around for debris.
"Skull, looks okay. No visible fractures."
"Um, excuse me. Did you say you can see my skull?"
"Oh yes. I can touch it," she said putting her finger back in and pushing against my bone. For forty-five minutes I listened to her tell her intern all the ways she was doing it wrong and overheard the nurses talking about patients in other rooms. At least two were there for abortions. My parting gifts were seven stitches, painkillers, and a bill for $140. Take that American health care system.
 |
| My trash hat staining the sink water with blood. |
I picked up my daughter at a friend's. They invited me in, but I just wanted to go home and sit in a tub full of Epsom salts. I felt like such an old person.
But first, I had to keep the blood stains from setting. I filled the sink with water and shampoo and threw my bloody hat in to soak.
Seven days later, I lay in an Indonesian hotel room while my cousin, aided by an 8-year old with a head lamp removed my stitches using only manicure scissors and eyebrow tweezers. While this sounds ridiculous, it is totally okay because she is a real life trained doctor.
So that's it. That's that story. I now have a lightning bolt-shaped scar above my left eyebrow that alternates between numbness, throbbing, or electrical shooting pains--but only if I'm near evil.
