Adventures in Parenting
X Scrapes X
A wail shattered the afternoon air into a million tiny, sparkly pieces. "MAAAAAMMAAAA!!!"
Jolting at the sound of her son's voice lobbed into her stomach like a giant baseball, Kagome scrambled up from her seat on the park bench and searched for any sign of a dark-haired little boy being attacked or in pain. Other mothers and older women that frequented the park's heads were swiveling back and forth like satellites to determine if their charges and children were the cause of another's pain. Kagome's eyes squinted against the bright glare of her son's cries of pain. There.
Running across the woodchip playground, she dipped and dodged around children and the hulking mass of plastic and metal that twisted into slides, bridges and platforms. She skid to a stop on her knees - ignoring the splintering bite on her kneecaps - beside the huddled form of her baby. Gathering him into the cradle of her arms, she shushed him softly, gently tugging at his hands.
"Sh, Shiro it's okay. Mama's here. Let me see; I'm here."
She ducked her head below his, peering up at his flushed, dewy face. Her hands worked softly over his to remove the obstruction to get to the pain. Shiro shook his head and tightened the clamp of his arms around the hurt.
Kagome exhaled and swiped the dark curtain of her hair out of the way. Her legs shifted and her arms and back tensed before she scooped him up and stood on the steady, practiced legs of a mother. She carried her son back to the bench and breezed off the concerned looks of the other women with a slight, reassuring smile. Setting him down, she knelt in front of him on the ground and rested her hands on his shoelaces.
"Let me see."
Shiro sniffled and shook his head.
"I can't fix it if you won't let me see, Shiro."
Hesitantly, he slowly unfolded to reveal a skinned knee. Tears clung to his spiked eyelashes as he stared up at her with trembling lips a snotty nose. Clucking softly in the back of her throat, Kagome kissed his crown.
"Oh, baby, I'm sorry. Did you fall?"
Shiro hiccupped and swiped the back of his wrist under his nose. "Yeah," came the tiny reply.
Kagome frowned sympathetically before standing up and helping him down off the bench. "C'mon. Let's wash this off at the drinking fountain."
With soothing fingers, she washed the dirt and debris from his scrape before rooting around in her overalls for an antibacterial wipe – which made him whine at the sting and she just nodded knowingly – and a Batman band-aide. After his wounds were bandaged and his tears dried, she pushed him on the swings for half an hour before giving him a piggyback ride to the bus stop. Shiro smiled the whole way home.
I have a thing for Batman. And band-aides. And overalls. Put them all together and you get this… Sort of. I suppose you could say I might have a thing for gravity too since I do quite a bit of falling. Especially these days because of the skit I'm working on for church. At rehearsal on Saturday, I got pretty banged up. Which is the point. But it still hurts, even if it's just pretend… – Hope