Bad Mommy

Living overseas is hard, even if you get a super sweet government post like Germany. There are a million things to learn: the rules the road, customs, language, where to shop, etc. It normally takes about six months to really feel like you’re more than just a visitor.

You don’t have that luxury to ease into the new system when you’re got an infant and a toddler. They can throw even the calmest of days into utter chaos. Combine that with your husband being gone and your children being left with you (an impatient, tired and stress-out mother) and sometimes heaven feels a little bit like H-E-double hockey sticks.

Take Monday for example. I planned to take Abby back to the Pumpkin Patch to bring a little bit more joy to her day. She decided to sit in Oliver’s car seat (with him in it) on the porch as I’m hurrying around getting the last minute things done. In frustration, I snapped at her to get off the baby. She did just that, and put her finger in the hinge-part of the door just as I’m closing it.

That story is bad enough, but what makes it ten times worse is this: as I turned back to see why she wasn’t coming, I heard an ear piercing scream (I think she lost her breath and it took a minute for her voice to catch up) and I looked back to see blood pouring down her arm and unto the doorstep and a tiny finger smashed in the LOCKED door.

I ran over and began frantically searching for my key, which was in my purse, to unlock the door and rescue her poor finger. It probably took about 15 seconds, but to a shaking and hysterical mother it felt like forever.

Yup, WORST PARENT EVER!

When her finger was free it was quite clear that it was hammered. The whole top part of her finger was FLAT. Blood was pouring out from behind the nail, which almost instantly turned black, and the lower part of the finger was twice the normal size.

I panicked. There is no way around it. The guilt overwhelmed me. She was in a HUGE amount of pain that I caused. Cue tears from both of us.

I left poor Oliver in his car seat on the doorstep and ran to the neighbors with Abby in my arms. I don’t know what I expected them to do, but I knew that I couldn’t stop the bleeding while driving around random neighborhoods looking for a hospital. I was totally lost (literally and figuratively) on how to help her.

One of my neighbors ran to get Oliver (who was screaming at this point), while the other neighbors called me a “taxi,” which turned out to be an ambulance.

Luckily, the ambulance ride lulled Oliver to sleep. Abby also passed out from the excitement at this point. It was all nice and quiet when I slowly realized that I didn’t have my health insurance card or my passport or my cell phone (which has all my embassy and church contacts, for times when you really need someone to come and hold a baby while you calm a screaming child in a foreign hospital with a foreign language). AWESOME.

Praise be to Wolfgang, my neighbor) who followed the ambulance to the hospital and kindly carried around Oliver and my purse. It would have been quite difficult to manage the baby while laying on top of Abby on the X-ray table to hold her down while they tried to take a few snapshots of her thumb.

To conclude the details of this day, which I hope to erase from my memory forever, Abby has a fractured pinkie. We were really lucky that she didn’t lose it, considering how long it was in the door, that it was on the hinge side of the door and how heavy and solid that door was.

We all learned a valuable lesson that day: Abby learned not to put her fingers in the door and I learned that Jeremy is a much better parent.

Perhaps it’s a good thing children this age don’t usually remember things….