Who knew Saturday when we woke for the day that we'd be sitting in a hospital emergency room later that night with our youngest child?
Yes, Saturday evening at a friend's cook-out our Hans had a trampoline injury that led to a broken right heel for him. A calcaneal fracture, they say. (Non-medical people, like me, do not know that a calcaneus=heel until one of their children break it.) Yes - there was a safety net around the trampoline, and no - he did not fall off. Somehow, the impact of the bounces of the other young children jumping with him were just enough to cause his sweet, little heel to crack about half-way through the bone. Thankfully we were five minutes away from one of the best children's hospitals in the country, and Hans was not in much pain unless he tried to stand or walk.
(Now his big blue cast and I are looking for ways to keep him happily immobilized for the next month. Any ideas?)
Do I re-play the events of the evening in my mind to try and think about how I could have prevented this accident from happening? ALL OF THE TIME! Does it just break my heart to see him in that big cast when all he wants to do is to run and play? COMPLETELY! Will he be jumping on a trampoline any time soon? NO WAY!
Do I wish I would have never let him on the trampoline to begin with?? Now, this one I'm not so sure about. See, I think the unexpected is God's gift to us. Because if we know something bad is going to happen, we would never do anything. We would never let our kids try anything. They would never have the experiences in life, the "bad" ones, that make them human and help to write their stories.
So, as parents we do the best we can to keep them as safe as possible, and most of the time it works out. But sometimes it doesn't. We learn from these times. Like now I know that my son was just a bit too young to be bouncing on that trampoline.
But I also know that in those minutes leading up to the accident, my brave boy was laughing and bouncing as proudly and joyfully as could possibly be and having the biggest time of his little life.
This is part of his story.