Me, the Mother Hen

Thirteen years ago I was standing outside my home on a bright, beautiful Saturday in August when a little boy, barely two, wandered into the road between two cars parked along the curb. He was crossing the street to play at my neighbor’s house, where he had a two-year-old buddy, but he didn’t have parental permission, of course, or a hand to hold to cross safely. (Two year olds know no fear. He only wanted to play.) At the same moment I heard a truck barreling down the street behind me. I screamed…so loud that my throat was sore for several days afterward…hoping to scare Seth (that was the little boy’s name) into stopping before it would be too late. I wanted him to wonder, ‘What is that woman screaming about?’ and stop to look at me, but a second later I witnessed the child’s body bouncing beneath the truck’s axel. A few hours later, after dark had fallen and I had heard the song ‘Bring Him Home’ for the first time, Seth was officially pronounced dead at the hospital. Some of his organs and tissues live on in others, but his precious little spirit has gone on.

I had two small boys of my own at the time, and have since had two girls. I would have been classified as an overly protective mother even before Seth’s death, but I have become an overly protective mother-at-large since. In the years that followed the tragedy, I became a un-caped crusader, stopping lackadaisical parents everywhere to tell them the cautionary tale of Seth if it appeared that they were not properly restraining their children. On several occasions, I’ve parked my car in strange neighborhoods to walk toddlers home – children who were too young to be walking down the street alone. Some of them were lost, others were not old enough to talk, and one was wearing only a diaper. Some parents were defensive, others appreciative or embarrassed, but I tried not to concern myself with their reactions. Most of them are probably wonderful, caring parents – they have simply not witnessed the instantaneous tragic death of a child and probably cannot imagine it happening. They are blithely unaware of the potentially irreversible consequences of inattentiveness.

My own children bore the brunt of my anxiety. We held hands like clustered sky-divers in grocery store parking lots until they were tall enough to be seen over car bumpers. To this day, in order to reduce the risk of choking, I slice all hot dogs length-wise and dispose of small bouncy balls and disk-shaped hard candies immediately. I have never encouraged them to wander far from home or to ride their bikes to distant shopping centers like I did a child, even though I enjoyed those outings and gained confidence in myself by returning safely from them. There is value even in childhood in spending time alone, confronting fears and dangers, real and imagined, but my children have rarely had such experiences. They do remarkably well in the real world despite my overbrooding nature. I’m sure it hasn’t been easy for them to spread their wings from inside the cocoon.

I know, I know – it’s impossible to prevent every eventuality. We can’t clothe our children in bubble wrap. Reasonable precautions can be taken, yes, but life itself is so precious that spending our lives preventing life from happening has a cost, too.

A few years ago my children and I were sitting ducks at an intersection, waiting for the left turn light, when a Dodge pickup truck slammed into the back of our mini van. We were dazed and confused with bumps and bruises and a few lacerations, but we emerged without serious injuries. Our mini van, however, was totaled independently at both ends. Every seat, including the car seat, was broken.

From that experience I learned that sometimes it’s simply a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We can be grateful for the pieces of our lives left intact, pick them up, literally, and go on.