Detour Details

One year ago this week, life took a huge detour.

I don't want to get into the details because my kids are teenagers now and they do not like "the details" to be out there for the whole web to read.  I respect that......

So, let me just say: the detour involved a hockey player (that I gave birth to) a wayward puck, a crash of the net and a terrible twist of the head as it smacked off the solid, frozen sheet of ice.  That head belonged to the hockey player that I gave birth to.

I remember that head after he was born.  My water broke and he was like BOOM! out in the world.  Labor was ummm, less than 3 hours? Pushing?   I think it happened?  All I really remember is this beautiful face looking at me, the eyes blinking and the brow raised and he was screaminggggg!  He was screaming like a starving future hockey player and I was smitten and in immediate unconditional LOVE!

So much for not sharing details.........

When I drove THP (the hockey player) home from the rink, the night of the injury, he was screaming.  I thought his knee was shattered by the wayward puck.  I thought his goalie life was over and I imagined major surgery(s) and lots of rehab.  My heart hurt for him.  All these years of playing a sport he loves so much and then in an instant, the realization sinking in that this might be the end of the road for THP.  I was thinking this and all the while listening to a scream that sounded (not that far off from)  the sounds he made in his first few minutes in this world.  I could see an image of that newborn face in the contorted, pained adolescent face staring at me and then I tasted tears.   I don't remember ever giving them permission to fall; because I knew as soon as he saw them, he would be worried more about me than he was about his knee/head/whatever was making him scream.

Instead, they slipped out.....my tears and his screams......so much like the afternoon he arrived in this world, only then it was his screams and my tears. 

And then he slipped into a sleep,  like a baby....isn't that the saying?

When I woke him and he could not remember a lot of what happened, I realized the ice had left a calling card, call it a concussion, if you will.

And a new journey began....one that lasted a few months, as we worked with a team to heal the head of the THP......and heal he did.  And smile, he smiled through the whole recovery, the therapies, the appointments, the missed games and missed tryouts for next season.  He kept smiling and never once did he ask "why me?".......... He still does not remember alot of what happened, does not remember falling, does not remember anything between the wayward puck and a coach helping him off the ice.  He does not, thankfully remember the screaming.

I do.  I remember the details.   All of them.  Whether I want to or not. 

And when they try to haunt me, as memories sometimes attempt to do at times, I smother them with the newborn images, the same face, the same cry, the same determination, the same hunger, the same look of love in his eyes.  The detour, it can't keep us.

THP, as you return to combative....ooops, I meant, of course:....competitive play!!! And as I return to writing and working,  and as the year of memories slowly slides into next years adventures...... I wish both of us only successes.

I will always be glad that my life left me with the ability to drop everything to make sure that you were able to receive everything to completely heal.

Life and its journeys and its detours, how it can twist  a mother's heart.  Maybe I was not supposed to share all of the above details with other Combative Sport Moms....but I am so not perfect, I am only human.

PS:And if you, (out there), think I stopped writing, no way.....its just that at times like those, my writing is on paper.  Just for me, Just for him, (someday).