Tonight We Cried

I can’t believe it’s 2020! All around me people are talking about their resolutions and what they’re going to do different this year. I am so excited for them! I know my year will be full of character building opportunities and things that don’t kill me and, I’m sure, some personal growth.

Growth is hard, though. And often painful.

Tonight was a pretty rough night in our house. I had some difficult conversations and had to say things that I thought I would never have to say – things that I hoped and prayed I would never have to say. Tonight I said them.

At bedtime, I tucked the covers around The Boy and crawled into his bed to snuggle for a bit. (He is the best snuggler!) He reached into his repertoire of Sleep Evading Maneuvers and pulled out Thought Provoking Questions. He almost always wins with that one.

He asked how long it’s been since he’s been to school and I told him, about three full weeks. Then I had to remind him that before vacation he had his tooth pulled. How could he forget that?!?!? THAT was a terrible day!

I kept him out of school because of a bad toothache and made him an appointment with the dentist. The dentist did an x-ray and said he had developed a cavity in the tooth and now there was a slight abscess – not big enough to cause serious problems but big enough to cause a lot of pain. The tooth had to come out.

So we waited around the office for two and a half hours for them to work us into the schedule and then finally took him back. They started the laughing gas and knew he was ready when he started asking if the nurse had his rocks. (WHAT ROCKS???) He wasn’t laughing but we sure were!

They used plenty of Novocain and numbed him up real good. He was drooling like a Bull Mastiff! But when they tried to pull the tooth, it just wasn’t going down without a fight. The dentist pulled and wiggled and wiggled and pulled but that sucker was STUCK. It was taking so long and the roots were so deep that the Novocain wasn’t helping anymore. My Boy started feeling the pain and started crying. He pulled me close to him and held on as tight as he could.

Well, of course, as soon as he started crying , he couldn’t breathe in the laughing gas anymore so that started wearing off. Things were going south pretty quickly! The dentist said, “We’ve got to just do it. Okay?” Okay. So I draped myself over The Boy like a security blanket and the Hygienist held all the tools with one hand and gently stroked The Boy’s head with her other. And the Dentist pulled with all his might.

The Boy let out a wail that could be heard throughout the building but that damn tooth finally came out!!!

The bleeding stopped pretty quickly but it took about an hour to get The Boy to stop crying. I held him and rocked him and soothed him and did all the Mommy things but he just couldn’t get the crying under control. When I told him he sounded like Moaning Myrtle (from Harry Potter) he didn’t even laugh. It was pretty horrible for all involved and took a while for the healing to begin.

So when he asked me tonight how long it had been since he’d been to school, we had to factor in winter break and tooth extraction recovery time. It’s been a while.

Then he started asking other questions. Big questions.

Questions about life and some about death. Questions about love and losing love. Questions about red-tailed black sharks being critically endangered. We talked about all kinds of things.

Then he got quiet and wrapped his little arms around me and began to cry.

I held him close and I cried too. At one point, he said, “I don’t even know why I’m crying. Do you?”

I gave him the best answer I could come up with on short notice and tears streaming down my face…

Tonight we cry because our hearts have been broken. We cry for those poor red-tailed black sharks. We cry because we’ve lost people we love and because we know we’re going to lose more people we love. We cry because tomorrow is Monday and we have to go back to reality after we’ve spent two weeks playing and reading and building ALL the Lego sets. We cry because it will be so good to see all our friends that we have missed so much! Tonight we cry.

But tomorrow…tomorrow we will get up and our hearts will be a little less broken. We will hold each other close and soak in the strength of the people who are always there for us. The daylight will help us remember good things about those we’ve lost and give us the opportunity to make more memories with those we still have. We’ll get to see our friends again and hug them so tight! Maybe we’ll even think of a way to help that shark!

Tomorrow we will be strong again and put on happy faces and have wonderful days but tonight we cried.