Slash

It's often the little things that hurt.

It's the comment last week from our neighbor, teasing us for not coming to the block party. As she went out the door, jokingly saying "Well, once you have a kid, you won't get any free passes for skipping the block party."

Doesn't she just have it completely backwards?

First of all, dead baby is always a 'free pass' for something we don't want to do. It's not even a pass, and it certainly wasn't free.

Secondly, it's the other kids running around the street - on that one day a year that they are allowed to play in the street - that sends us to our protective shell. Those kids, laughing and giggling, up to way past their bedtimes, all without Serenity. That little toddler that isn't. Like a glass shard through my heart.

Besides, next October, when hope against all hope, beanie is 6 months old, I think we the parents will still be able to decide what to do.

It's the fact that the cat has diarrhea, and Triple S is worried to the point of boiling anger that whatever the cat has got is going to harm beanie. And it is dealing with his temper, and a sick cat, and trying to give said pain-in-the-butt-sick cat any kind of medication, and with Triple S complaining about and oftentimes gagging at the litter box. Like having small pieces of ground glass rubbed into your arm.

It's the jewelry that I have either misplaced, thrown out, or had stolen. Three pieces, my most expensive, that were all wedding gifts. And I haven't called the insurance company, because I don't want to deal with them. I had an apartment robbed (twice) in grad school, and the insurance adjuster basically accused me of selling my own items and then reporting them stolen. And that was with broken windows and police reports. Now, I just have a picture of two of the items that I haven't been able to find since we returned from the wedding in Toronto in July and my word. Another scratch, another irritation, another stress.

It's the blood test that went from a 1:374 risk for Down's due to my age to a 1:324 risk. As the genetic counselor read the results, cheerily saying, "Don't worry, it's not a big change," I wondered if she thinks I am an absolute moron with zero math skills. Sure, there are still 323 babies with 46 chromosomes, and just one with 47, but it's not the same as going from 374 to say, oh, 1000. Another worrisome scratch that saps strength.

I can ignore these cuts and scrapes, push them aside with hope that the quad screen will come back better, that the jewelry will turn up in the weirdest place, that I will at some point come up with a way to articulate the hurt I feel from dumb witticisms, that the cat will either get better or croak. However, eventually, these metaphysical injuries coalesce into something that needs to get out, to be released. To be washed away with tears.