For instance, the other night Isaac did sort of a “Nestea plunge” into the pillows. Being three, he didn’t think ahead too far and while he technically knew that I was there (i was actively reading him a story), he did not foresee what would happen next. As you may have guessed, I was actually lying down on those same pillows at that very moment! he flung himself at a speed many times greater than the force of gravity. His large head, which at that moment resembled nothing so much as a bowling ball, collided directly with the bridge of my nose. There issued a sickening “crack!” Pain surged through all the bones in my face in rapid succession, sinuses, upper teeth, forehead all in play. My thought was simply that he broke it. I remembered (of course time slowed down) a long time ago this friend of mine was talking about a movie he was making (Tromeo and Juliet). During a fight scene, one actor accidentally broke the nose of another, and it made a sickening crack sound that they could not resist including in the movie– so real! He said, “When you really break a nose, it’s not like in the movies. There doesn’t have to be a fountain of blood. It just gets sort of puffy.” All this went on in my head as I sat up and cupped my hand to my face, nonetheless expecting a fountain of blood. Isaac was screaming and crying due to the force of the impact– I mean, how hard MY NOSE hit the back of HIS HEAD. I called for back-up. Ben was asleep in the other room. He came stumbling in, peered closely at my nose without his glasses on, and told me to put ice on it. That seemed like very good advice, so I blundered downstairs in the dark and got myself a bag of frozen corn wrapped in a dish towel. I placed this on my throbbing face and stumbled into bed in our room. Of course, soon enough Isaac began to call me and beseech me to come in to be with him and daddy in his room. So in the hopes of getting some peace and quiet I came back with my first aid corn applied to my face and cuddled up with him.
Now this is the best part: Isaac could see with his little nocturnal cat eyes that I had some frozen corn. Did he say, “Sorry I maybe broke your nose, Mommy!”? Did he say, “Sorry your whole face is in total pain right now!”? No… what he said was, “Can I have some corn?” — I mean, to eat! He wanted to EAT my first aid corn that I needed because of an injury he inflicted! I groaned no. Then he started kicking, thrashing and screaming, “Why I can’t have a snack!? Why I can’t have some very cold corn?!” (I might add here that he loves to eat frozen corn..) I honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry about all this, but I wouldn’t give him the corn. I drifted off to sleep with the bag of corn so soothingly resting on my face, to a bone-rattling chorus of his screams.
The next morning I expected the two-black-eyes look, but it’s really okay. It’s not broken. I have a slightly new look to my profile, but not disfiguring, and the bruising has been surprisingly moderate.