Sometimes the space between a good evening and a bad evening is a call to dinner and the following 30 seconds.

I received a little gift in the form of an extra evening with Justin. Apparently Dan had some sort of meeting, so I got to keep Just an extra day. Woo!

The evening started off well, with me headed directly for the kitchen to make dinner, and Justin headed off on his bike to regions unknown (otherwise known as our street and the street connected to it). We live at the bottom of a hill that ends in a cul-de-sac, and I use this fact as rationalization for allowing Justin to roam unsupervised on his bike. (I also remember the fact that when I was nearly eight, I was roaming my parents’ entire subdivision for hours unsupervised, so I really just need to lighten up.)

After the welsch rarebit was ready, I went out to call the kiddo. He was at the top of the hill, and when I called him, I heard the plaintive, “But Mommmmm…” start up. Ignoring it this time, I turned and walked back toward the carport from the bottom of the driveway.

I had reached the gate of the deck and had wandered through it, headed for the back door, when I heard the sound. It was a combination of metal crunching into asphalt and the scream of a seven year old.

I believe I completed a 20-yard dash in less than a second.

To me, the sight was something akin to nightmarish. Justin and the bike were in a heap on the ground. He was crying (not screaming like I would have been) and I grabbed him and hoisted him up. “Where do you hurt? Are you okay? Is anything broken?”

I will freely admit that I am not the calm in the storm when it comes to Justin and emergent care.

He was in no mood to answer my idiotic questions, so I just picked him up and hugged him, surreptitiously hunting for open wounds and broken bones.

“Can you walk?” I asked. “Noooooo,” he cried. I looked down at the bike, which was in the middle of the street. “Justin, honey, I have to move the bike. Can you stand up for a minute?”  ”Noooooo,” he cried. Alrighty then.

Somehow the crying kid, the scratched-up bike, and the freaked out mom all managed to make it back to the backyard. I checked Justin out in the kitchen - he’d stopped fretting over the scare and was now worried about seeing blood. (This is the new paranoia in the household. Before this it was touching trees. I couldn’t begin to explain.)

My Accident Recontruction senses told me that the bike had apparently hit a hole in the street at great speeds ::sigh:: and dumped over. It appears that the entire left side of Justin’s head attempted to create another pothole. He was bruised on his browbone, cheekbone, and had gravel-burn in his chin. He’d look like a warrior in a day or two.

Just as my fright was easing up, he complained about his shoulder.

I peeled the shirt off and discovered, to my dismay, a wound the size of his palm. With Justin yelling at me about allowing him to see blood, I hunted down gauze and tape and stuff. Yeah, right. I found some tiny bandaids and that’s about it. The best “cleanser” I could find was witch hazel, and the best makeshift gauze was a cotton square that I use to take my makeup off.

By the end of the night, my nerves were completely rattled, Justin was impressed that he’d “survived,” and we both laughed as he got into bed with a big cotton square on his shoulder, held in place by a liberal helping of scotch tape.

This “mom” stuff isn’t what I’d expected.

Planning for a first aid kit,

michelle