I did not want to turn this blog into a confessional, but I'll make this one exception, because nothing is on my mind except the horrible thing that happened today. And writing about it might help prevent it from happening again.
I locked myself out of the car--with the baby still in it.
It still shocks me to write those words. It makes me feel too stupid to be a parent. And it just makes me damn angry at myself.
Luckily, my husband was about fifteen minutes away; luckily, he had my car key on him; luckily, he answered the phone right away when I called him from the parking garage where this had happened. Still--it was fifteen minutes of agony as I watched my baby crying through the back window of the car, as I tried in vain to soothe and distract him with finger games and smiles. He cried and cried, howling sometimes, the tears streaming down his face, his eyes growing puffy and red. That image of him crying inconsolably is now imprinted in my brain as if on concrete. And yes, the built-in joke is appropriate--that's about all my brain is these days, I sometimes think.
But what happens when this kind of disaster strikes is hopefully something like this: as a parent you kick into higher gear--because you have to. You have to pull yourself together, realize that you did something horrible, then do absolutely everything in your power to prevent it from happening ever again.
The boy bounced back so quickly afterwards that I realized all over again how resilient he is; but it doesn't erase the stupidity of what happened...and my resolve to, damn it, never let it happen again.
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