Perfect Parenting

by Aaron Baird

For most people, raising children is a terrifying prospect.  At least for me, the main reason for reservation lies in the idea that parenting is a pass or fail test.  That is, the child either becomes a productive, well-adjusted member of society, or a serial killer.  This is not to imply that one needs to be flawless to be considered a good parent, though.  In fact, my parents make a perfect case study of just such a counterexample.

Neither of my parents came from rich families so in order to support my brother and me they both had to work.  My father worked days at a distribution warehouse and my mother took a job as a waitress at a restaurant down the street from our home in a Rodchester subdivision. This translated into very little time spent with both parents together, at least for the first few years of my life.

Shawn, being one and a half years my senior, took great joy in being the Big Brother.  He felt it his duty to keep me entertained with such wonderful games as "force things up the baby's nose" and "repeatedly poke the baby in the eye."  My dad had the misfortune of watching us on the summer day in which my brother decided to play "race the baby around the living room."

I was two and still unsure on my feet, so my parents frequently kept me in a walker.  This afforded my brother the perfect opportunity and, doing the best imitation of an engine he could, he grabbed the back of my seat and sped off with all the fervor a four-year-old can muster. The first couple of laps around the room were actually quite enjoyable.  I started to giggle which, naturally, my brother interpreted as my way of saying "speed up".

Now, those of you familiar with racing understand the importance of banking the corners of a racetrack.  My parents, never being big fans of the speedway, unfortunately failed to incorporate this feature into our family room.  Thus, as my brother took that final turn, I toppled over, banging my head on the edge of the coffee table on the way down. This ended my amusement of the event and I let out a screech that could have raised the dead.

My father, who had been in the kitchen doing the dishes during this escapade, entered the room just in time to see a large spot on my head (which was the most unsightly shade of purple) swell to the size of an average baseball.  He of course flew into an immediate panic, snatched me up, and ran out the door for the hospital, yelling for Shawn to follow.  To his credit, Shawn did follow my father outside.  Upon seeing what a lovely day it was, though, he figured it was the perfect time to play hide-and-seek.  By the time my father noticed that my brother wasn't behind him, Shawn was half way around the house.  So off Dad went, with me in tow, to catch him.

I'm afraid my medical knowledge is somewhat on the shy side, but there is one thing I do know: major head trauma and violent shaking (such as produced while running) are not good bedfellows.  When my father finally impressed upon Shawn that this wasn't a new game we were playing, I was howling like a banshee.

Cradling me with my face against his chest to somewhat muffle my screams (we were in a subdivision, after all), he piled my brother into the car and shut the door.  But as he turned around to go put me in the other side, he noticed a slight tug on my leg.  Looking down, he saw one of my legs dangling limply and the other pinned in the car door.  Apparently, since I was already screaming at the top of my little lungs, I couldn't increase my decibel level more to signify that my foot was being squished, so he hadn't noticed until he tried to walk away.

My mother left work after a rather confusing call from a distraught man that somewhat sounded like her husband.  By the time she arrived at the hospital, the bulge on my head had shrunk to about the size of a marble and turned a rosy pinkish color.  The doctors were actually more concerned about my foot.  We found out when we were about to leave that the hospital staff had almost called the police to investigate whether my father had abused me (this was, after all, my third trip to the emergency room in the past six months), but decided his story was fairly plausible after seeing how devastated he was and moreover, how active Shawn was.

Despite the traumatic nature of this event, no permanent harm came from it.  I wasn't disfigured, I don't walk with a limp, and I get along with my brother just fine.  What I did take away from this incident was the knowledge that you don't need to be a perfect parent to be a good parent.  And for me, that takes away much of the fear of raising children.