Mommy Guilt

I'm still feeling terrible about not whisking Jack off to the country's top orthopedist within seconds of him hurting his foot. I feel awful about it, just awful. You know what though? I'm not sure I actually do.

It's always Mom's fault -- we all know that. We blamed our own moms for anything and everything and now we are the fall guys, er, gals when our own kids need a scapegoat. Nobody blames us more than we blame ourselves for every little thing, real and imagined, that happens to our kids. It's not always our fault -- if it was, CPS would have put our kids in foster care long ago -- but we act like it is. Part habit, part badge of honor because we're the #1 parent and the buck stops here, the guilt is always at the ready. This time, though, I don't think I'm going to buy into it.

Jack is a drama queen. I say that with love and affection for it's the truth and I love my boy with all his quirks. Seriously, he has had hangnails that required more pain relief measures and loving attention than my c-section incisions did. He wasn't like that with the foot, though. Sure, he cried when it happened and he didn't want to go to the boardwalk that night but the crying wasn't excessive by his standards and I chalked it all up to him being tired (he'd been at the Phillies game and run the bases that afternoon in the blazing heat) and the late hour (we got to the shore at the time when I'd normally be getting them to bed at home.) The next day he was up like gangbusters, eager to go in the pool and go in the pool he did, swimming in his floatie and splashing from one end of the pool to the other in the rain for hours. We didn't go to the boardwalk that night, true, but it was actually because Tom and I were going out to dinner with friends, not because he didn't want to go. (Funny how memory colors in the details with shades of deception to make the guilt worse!) The next day, he was on the beach and to the boardwalk with an eager smile and only a slight limp, assuring me all the while that his foot was fine. ("Look! I can run! I can jump! I'm fine, Mom, really.") If I'd been trying to get him to do something boring like shop for his sisters' clothes, I'm sure that he wouldn't have been so quick to assure me that all was well but his desire to do all of his favorite shore activities made him work hard to prove that it didn't hurt. And maybe it didn't hurt as much because he was so happy to be having shore fun. Mind over matter and all that psychological mumbo-jumbo.

I don't know. Maybe I'm justifying. Maybe I'm trying to make me feel like less of a horrible, negligent mother. But maybe, just maybe, I'm right and this one isn't on me. It isn't on anyone. Accidents happen and we can only work with the facts we are given. That's what I did and while the results weren't perfect, he's going to be fine and that is what matters most.