It started out as such a nice afternoon. We were living in our apartment in West Roxbury. Dishon was in the kitchen, and I was in the living room with the kids. Serena and Cairo were at their little kid table coloring with colored pencils. Cairo had an orange pencil that had become dull, so I sharpened it for him. I sharpened it to a fine point, too, because I hate writing with dull pencils. If this were a movie, the orange colored pencil would be the object of foreshadowing.
Serena was potty training at the time, and there had been an incident before where she wasn't able to get to the potty because we had the childproof knobs on the bathroom door to keep Cairo out. Because she couldn't get into the bathroom, she ended up having an accident, and she was very upset by that. Ever since Serena was a toddler, doing things just right has been important to her, so I wanted to make sure she could get into the bathroom unhindered this time. I ran off with her to open the door. I didn't think that Cairo would run after us. I definitely didn't think about him running with that freshly sharpened pencil. He did run after us. He did bring the pencil. I realized this when I heard the screaming outside the bathroom door.
He had fallen while running with the orange colored pencil, lacerated his right eyelid, and fell with such force that he fractured
the right eye socket in his skull. We took him to the emergency room of a local hospital where they told us that we'd have to wait for two hours before he'd be seen. How could they look at this little boy with that gaping wound to his eye, see him crying and see us struggling to keep him from pulling at his eye and tell us to wait for two hours? I'm still mad about that. We left that hospital and Dishon took him to our pediatrician's office while I took Serena home. Our pediatrician didn't have sutures, so Dishon was advised to take Cairo to Boston Children's Hospital.
In order to stitch his eye and x-ray to see if there were any pencil remnants in his eyelid, Cairo needed to be anesthetized. The doctors gave him the first round of anesthesia through the IV, and waited for him to fall asleep. He didn't go under with the first round, so they gave him more anesthesia. It looked like he was under after the second round, so they went to stitch his eyelid, but he became alert again, grabbed at the doctor's hands and started swinging wildly! They had to give him as much anesthesia as they could give a child his age and weight. He finally went down so they could close his wound. Our boy has always been a fighter.
As awful as it was, look at his smile. This could have been so much worse. Our little boy could have
lost his eye that day . . . but he didn't, and I'm so grateful. As his mom, I had to work through so much guilt. Why did I have to sharpen that pencil? Why didn't I take the pencil from him before running off to the bathroom with Serena? So many whys . . . but I learned to be grateful for the grace we experienced that day. He had to take antibiotics for a while to make sure his eye didn't become infected, and he took his medicine like a champ. Progressively, he got better and better.
As I create the narrative in my novel, I'm thinking about how people respond in emergencies. Some people rush to action. Some people are like deer caught in headlights. I tend to be in the latter group, and I'm so thankful that Dishon is one of the former.
There will be a couple of situations in the novel where characters are in danger. One scene involves an accident at Prospect Park in Brooklyn - Prospect Park, where I have so many fond memories (picnics, riding bikes with my friends, meeting my cousin Betty Jean for the first and only time, and loving her), and some not so great memories (an adult crashing into my bike as I was riding down the hill as a little kid, which caused me to flip off of my bike, black out and cut my leg - WHY were they riding so close to me? Also hearing about the little boy who was eaten by the polar bear at the Prospect Park Zoo - still horrifying). Another scene will involve an accident involving the main characters' best friend - I'm still deciding how that will happen. I think it will involve a character's allergy to bee stings or an asthma attack. Remembering what this day felt like for me will help me to write those scenes authentically.
It started out as such a nice afternoon. We were living in our apartment in West Roxbury. Dishon was in the kitchen, and I was in the living room with the kids. Serena and Cairo were at their little kid table coloring with colored pencils. Cairo had an orange pencil that had become dull, so I sharpened it for him. I sharpened it to a fine point, too, because I hate writing with dull pencils. If this were a movie, the orange colored pencil would be the object of foreshadowing.
There will be a couple of situations in the novel where characters are in danger. One scene involves an accident at Prospect Park in Brooklyn - Prospect Park, where I have so many fond memories (picnics, riding bikes with my friends, meeting my cousin Betty Jean for the first and only time, and loving her), and some not so great memories (an adult crashing into my bike as I was riding down the hill as a little kid, which caused me to flip off of my bike, black out and cut my leg - WHY were they riding so close to me? Also hearing about the little boy who was eaten by the polar bear at the Prospect Park Zoo - still horrifying). Another scene will involve an accident involving the main characters' best friend - I'm still deciding how that will happen. I think it will involve a character's allergy to bee stings or an asthma attack. Remembering what this day felt like for me will help me to write those scenes authentically.
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