The Fool

When Reilly was first born, I was afraid that she would suddenly die from SIDS, some unknown heart defect, or other hidden ailment. Reilly’s arrival had reopened my eyes to the fragileness of our existence, and how with all the dangers that come with just walking out the door, and all the random circumstance in life, we just choose to fool ourselves into believing we are safe. That it won’t happen to us. This anxiety did not go away in the first week or even the first month, but instead lessened in little increments each day. Then one day, without realizing it, the fear was gone, and I was once again under my self-imposed shield of false security.

As Reilly learned to walk, I began to worry again, this time fearing a serious injury, but as with before, this fear slowly eased until it was gone. Reilly did get a few bumps and bruises and bit her lip a few times, but these injuries did not stoke my fears, but rather quashed them. See, I told myself, she will fall, but she will not break.

For the most part, Reilly is a very agile walker, always falling to her diaper-padded bum, able to navigate stairs, doorjambs and cracks in the sidewalk. The beauty of her agility is that I don’t have to follow her around the house any longer. As long as she is within eyesight, I can tap out a blog entry on the computer, or watch a little television, and not have to concern myself with her falling and hurting herself. You might say that I relaxed. Or, you might say that I got lackadaisical.

Friday afternoon, at about 3:00pm, Shawn and I decided we would take Reilly to tour a local daycare. Since my shirt was wrinkled, and since it is well known by all daycare workers that fathers in wrinkled shirts are bad fathers, I took out the ironing board. When I turned my back to get the iron, Reilly fell into the ironing board, hitting her mouth on one of the screws that holds the contraption together.

There was much screaming and much blood. There was so much blood in Reilly’s mouth that we couldn’t really determine what had happened, but we were quite sure that one of her teeth might be missing. After staunching the bleeding and placing a hurried call, we left to visit our new pediatrician. By then, Reilly’s lip was quite swollen, but she was walking around the waiting room like nothing ever happened. She is, and remains, the bounce back baby.

As we sat at the doctor, through all my guilt, I was writing this blog in my head. All I could think was how sometimes you look for blogs, and sometimes, the blogs come looking for you.

The guilt though, the guilt. As it was the day I clipped Reilly’s finger instead of her fingernail, woe to the father who is responsible for hurting his little girl. Oh, I know, accidents happen, you’re a good father, blah, blah, blah, but what it boils down to is that I’m the one who put down the ironing board right next to Reilly, and I’m the one who turned my back on the situation. It happened on my watch. I’m responsible.

The doctor let us know that she didn’t actually lose the tooth. It just got jammed all the way back up into her gums. “See,” she said pushing Reilly’s fat lip up with a tongue depressor, “it’s still there.” She then explained that yes, it would grow back in, but it would probably be brown or grey in color. When I asked how long it would be until the adult tooth came in, she told me “five years.”

A little brown tooth will be my reminder then—for the next five years—of the day that I took my eye off my daughter, and how she tripped and smashed her face into the ironing board, her red blood reminding me that she is human—that we all are—and that life is not to be trifled with, not for a second.