REFLECTIONS ON FATHERHOODFirst Blood

Yesterday, my son mananged to stand up all on his own! This was very exciting... until he stopped mananging to stand. He fell very suddenly and his chin landed on his toy train. This put his tongue in the midst of an unexpected closing mouth. He ended up with two very deep puncture wounds on the top of his tongue, and two other puncture wounds on the bottom that we never got a good look at.

He's been clonked in the head a few times, has had his fingers pinched, and all sorts of minor injuries. However, this was the first time he has been injured so severly that it drew blood (and anyone who knows tongue injuries might guess, it was a lot of blood).

There are a lot of "first moments" when raising a child, and most of them are things you look forward to. You are also looking out for them: expecting them. This was not one we were expecting, yet it was inevitable. Needless to say, his crying was quite infectous.

In reading this, if you find me a bit glib, it is only because I deal with pain and suffering through humor. You generally know that I am taking a matter very seriously by how hard I work at finding a way to joke about it.

I guess what shocked me the most was how unprepared I was for this kind of thing: emotionally I mean. I mean, come on, he's a boy. He is going to bleed a lot. But despite the inevitablility of it, I really did not prepare myself for the day I would first see him bleed. I guess it is just typical of us to not expect the expected when it is unwanted.

I really have no ending to this post, since I am not really intending on going anywhere with this. I really just needed to get this off of my chest a bit. So instead of trying to force an ending here...