So, I was minding my own business, creeping through the hallway in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, when I tripped on Makayla’s stool in the bathroom. It was actually pretty dramatic, with Matt rushing in to find my nose and eyebrow bleeding and me, still dazed from going from half asleep to kind of injured. When I fell, I hit my eyebrow on the toilet seat and when I tried to stand up, got dizzy and fell onto the wall of the shower and busted my nose. Matt who had been woken up by all the noise was greeted by blood and a confused girlfriend. Luckily, the result of my incident had left my teeth intact and did not result in stitches or a concussion but un-luckily, the result was a cut on my eyebrow and a black eye. The next morning I examined my face in the mirror and announced that I looked either like an abuse victim or a ghetto hood rat who fights other ghetto hood rats. Matt assured me that the bruising would look worse in a few days and Makayla was utterly horrified and instructed me to drink lots of water and take a vitamin.
“I’m so sorry this has happened to you, Mommy!” she said as she poked the bruise under my eye, “that looks terrible. You need to be careful.”
“Please don’t poke my eye, Makayla,” I said, “that hurt. And it looks worse than it is. It doesn’t really hurt.”
She would look intently at my face during reading or Candyland or dinner and say, “that is the most terrible thing I have ever seen. It’s really bad looking, Mom. It’s all I can even tell about you when I look at you.”
I forgave her insults as child like honesty and told her it would get better soon.
Last night, as I brooded over my eye, I told Matt, “Something has just occurred to me. If people don’t think you whacked me or think I got in a fight with some freak, they will assume I am a drunk and just fell over. Do you know how it sounds to tell people that you tripped on a stool and hit your head on a toilet? This is worse than the black eye I got when I first started my roller-blading dodge ball team. At least then I had witnesses to account for the fact that the reason I had two black eyes is because I caught a roller blade with my face when I missed the ball.”
“Don’t worry about it so much,” he said, “it’ll get better soon.”
“I could wear sunglasses and be one of those freaks who wears sunglasses indoors. Or perhaps people will just assume I’ve had work done.”
He either didn’t hear me or ignored me and I decided I am not confident enough to go around the moms at Makayla’s school sporting a giant black eye and gash on my brow so I made Matt take her and get her from school. Today that was not an option and I had to take her and get her from school. When I took her, I dropped her off, sporting giant sunglasses and then sprinted back for my truck. When I went to get her, her class was having a party and Makayla didn’t want to leave so I was forced to stand there surrounded by other mothers who were being forced to stay by their children, wearing giant sunglasses, knowing I looked like a flippin’ weirdo. The other moms pretended not to notice until Makayla took it upon herself to announce loudly to no one of her friends, “my mommy has a black eye. That’s why she’s wearing those glasses. She’s just embarrassed to take them off because it looks REALLY bad. It’s the worst black eye she’s ever had.”
Blast. My child has been subjected to many of her mother’s black eyes during her childhood. One was from her toddler brother slamming a toy truck in my face. One was from an encyclopedia falling from a top shelf as I tried to pull the one beside it out. Actually, that was more of a bruised middle of the forehead at first but the bruise ended up spreading to both of my eyes. Twice in my grown up softball days I received a black eye: Once from horribly misjudging where the fly ball was going to land and the second was from not being aware that someone was throwing a ball at me. Or my face I guess. Then there was the roller-blading dodge-ball fiasco.
“My mommy said she is accident thrown,” Makayla said to her friend as I saw parents and the teacher whip their heads around to Makayla’s loud information, “that means that she is clumsy, I think. Because she is wearing those sunglasses and she tripped on my stool because she left it out after she gave me a bath. That is why she should have put it up.”
She was right. Makayla is very good about putting her stool in front of the sink. I was so tired that night as I sat on the stool and washed her hair that I neglected to put it back where it went.
“I hope your eye feels better,” Makayla’s teacher said as we left, “I thought you had your pupils dilated. Your sunglasses are awesome.”
“Thank you,” I said, “she is right. I am accident “thrown.”
She smiled at me and said, “some of us are,” and extended her leg so I could admire a giant bruise on her calf, “car door. Don’t ask me how I did it. I have no idea.”
Makayla and I went home and a little while later sat down to play some hot battles of Candyland. On our last game, I was nearly to the end, excited because Makayla had won the four previous games and I was eager to win at least one. But then I got sent back to the Peppermint Dork and Makayla said, “Oh no Mommy! It’s just like your eye that you got sent back there!”
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
“Just completely unfortunate,” she said.
Hardy Har.
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