By Lorren Lemmons
@lorrenlemmons

My daughter wriggled in my arms, her loose hospital bracelet sliding off once again. There was no good place to put a toddler in the emergency department--she could fall off the chairs or the bed, and there was no way I’d let her climb around on the floor. I tried to text my husband an update, but she threw her body away from mine, grabbing for the phone. “No, Millie!” I cried, tightening my grip on her. After a morning of x-rays, the last thing she needed was another fall. 

 I’d given in and turned on a YouTube video called “cute babies and puppies playing” when the doctor came back with a sheaf of x-rays. “So, it’s broken,” he said, pointing to her shinbone. “Her tibia didn’t break all the way through, but the front part is cracked. We’ll put her in a cast. Any particular color you want?”

***

At our church Halloween party the night before, the cultural hall had swarmed with little dinosaurs, princesses, witches, and superheroes. While my husband and I lingered over chili and cornbread with our friends, the kids climbed the stage and danced to “Monster Mash” and “Ghostbusters.” Millie, fuzzy and irresistible as Max from Where the Wild Things Are, ran around with the older kids, squealing at the decorations and occasionally swiping a forgotten cookie off a table. 

A familiar cry broke through the conversation at our table, and I turned toward the stage, already pushing back my foldout chair. My husband had already scooped her up. He walked toward us as she sobbed, “Mama! Mama!” 

“I didn’t see her fall, even though I was standing right there,” he said, shaking his head. “She was on the stairs, and then she was on the floor on hands and knees.”

It had taken her 15 minutes to calm down, but I’d chalked it up to tiredness—it was past her bedtime, and she’d had more than her share of sugar. When she’d refused to put weight on her leg, I’d assumed it was sensitivity—she’d always been more bothered by sickness and injury than my older two children, and I figured she was probably overreacting to what would be a bad bruise. I carried her from car to car for the “trunk or treat,” and her delight in her sugary spoils calmed my fears that she was seriously hurt.

When she refused to walk the next morning, lifting her foot every time I tried to set her down, I became worried enough to call the nurse advice line. They’d recommended the ER, but I’d still expected the doctors to tell me I was a helicopter mother and that she would be fine. 

Now, in the hospital, two doctors were wrapping bandages up to her hip. “We’re bending her knee extra so she won’t walk on it,” one said. “If she puts weight on it, it won’t heal and she’ll have to be casted again.” My daughter lay still and patient as they wrapped her leg, but a tear trickled from her eye.

I stroked her hair, humming a lullaby, but my heart throbbed. I broke my baby, echoed through my head in a distorted chant. Surely a better mother would have kept her toddler close, away from unrailed stage steps and hard gym floors. My most elemental role as her mother was to keep her safe, but instead, I’d allowed her bones to crack. 

*** 

My oldest child had his first cold at five weeks. In hindsight, it was inevitable; he was an early winter baby, going to family festivities for Thanksgiving and Christmas in his first weeks of life. At first, his sniffles and coughs were sad, but not frightening. I tried out one of the many bulb aspirators the hospital had sent home with us and hooked up the humidifier, referencing the newborn care book I’d researched and bought in my first trimester of pregnancy. However, as his little chest fought harder and harder to breathe, his ribs sucking in with every breath, my fear and anxiety heightened.

After two office visits and two emergency room visits, he was admitted to the hospital on New Year’s Eve for oxygen. His little body heaved and struggled as the nurses taped impossibly tiny oxygen tubing to his face. “Do you want to turn the TV on and watch the ball drop?” one of them asked me as we waited for my son’s room on the pediatric floor to be ready. I stared at her uncomprehendingly. What would I cheer for when my son--the sun my life now revolved around--couldn’t breathe enough air on his own? 

After we were settled into a room, well into the wee hours of the night, I took my first shower in three days in the hospital bathroom. Knowing my son was hooked up to a monitor and I could stop watching for every breath, my brain shifted out of survival mode as the panic suddenly took over. I stood under the weak flow from the showerhead and bit my fist to keep my sobs quiet. My baby was sick, so sick that he needed to be kept in a hospital. So sick he needed air flooding his nostrils to keep him alive. 

Etched into that panic was an awareness of my own failure. He’d gotten the cold from me—could I have washed my hands more? Worn a mask? We’d taken him to restaurants and holiday parties—shouldn’t we have realized that wasn’t safe? 

***

I’ve always known my own brokenness. Depression infected my brain like a parasite when I was ten years old. At first I didn’t have words for the thick gray cloud dulling my vision and choking my lungs, but I knew it wasn’t normal. I’d watch the girls in my fifth grade class with their bright clothes and high voices, practicing dances and cheers in the field at recess while I sat with my back against the brick wall, crying behind my Anne Frank book.

That darkness has lingered within me for over twenty years, sometimes fading away for a season or two, other times held at arm’s length with the help of therapy and antidepressants. Sometimes the storm descends after childbirth, my body raw and strange, sleep-starved and hormone-flooded. Sometimes the waves rise during times of transition, trying to pull me under as I navigate new streets and daily rhythms. Sometimes, there’s no harbinger at all, just a feeling of sinking, a clouding of my emotions that keeps me from experiencing love or joy. 

Through trial and error, I’ve learned the life buoys I can cling to when the raft of my mental health capsizes. I’ve learned to call doctors and keep appointments; to kneel in prayer even when heaven seems silent. I’ve learned who I can trust to hold space for my emotions, and that sometimes, I must choose rest over productivity. I’ve learned that even when I’m clinging to driftwood, desperately trying to keep my head above water, the waves will eventually calm. No situation is forever—the clouds eventually will recede. 

I’ve learned this for myself, but I resist that knowledge when it comes to my babies. I know in my mind that I can’t buffer them from life, but my heart is draped with garlands of superstition. Elderberry gummies every morning, hymns sung at bedtime, prayers filling the moments in between. If we pray as a family each night, they’ll always love God. If I get their immunizations on time and feed them vitamins, they’ll be healthy. If I keep them close to me, nobody will ever hurt them. 

In my mind, if I can get my children to adulthood, I won’t have to worry anymore, but my mom tells me differently. She says that even though my sister, my brother, and I are adults, living our own lives, she can’t sleep at night, worrying about us. I wonder how it felt to have a ten year old that laid on the floor and cried every day, how it felt to have a thirty-year-old confess that she couldn’t go in the kitchen because the tylenol and the kitchen knives were in there and she didn’t trust herself near them. I wonder what it’s like to have a piece of your soul, formed in your body, living thousands of miles away, making adult choices and facing adult problems. The worry ties us together as mothers, but I’m in the minor leagues, dealing with superficial wounds. She’s playing the big leagues, with hearts and souls at stake.  

I don’t think my daughter will remember this first little broken space. There will be other bruises and scars that are more impactful as she lives and grows in this imperfect sphere of mortality. But for me, it’s a reminder--we’re all fragile. We all break. I can’t protect my children from everything, even when I’d rather take every injury and hurt they face upon myself. 

My kids’ problems are still relatively simple. After four weeks in a cast, my daughter’s bone rebuilt itself. Most pains can still be soothed with a kiss; most problems my children have faced are the sort that resolve with time and kindness. Someday we will have higher mountains to climb, hurts that time won’t fully erase, and I hope I can help them bear up and go forward. Today, their problems are uncomplicated. Today, even broken bones heal. 

Guest essay written by Lorren Lemmons. Lorren lives with her Army dentist husband and their three children in Georgia. She is the submissions editor for Work + Wonder Collective and a regular contributor at Military Moms Collective. She has had her work featured on Motherwell, Coffee + Crumbs, Literary Mama, and other online publications. When she isn't writing, she loves being outdoors, reading, and cooking elaborate meals that her children refuse to eat.

Photo by Lottie Caiella.