this outtake is about fear. boo.

The second week of kindergarten, I got a phone call from the school. “Your daughter fell off the monkey bars on the playground, and her arm doesn’t look right.” This was coming from a school admin, as the nurse wasn’t there. She couldn’t say for sure, but we both knew it was broken. I drove to the school and walked into the nurse’s office, where my daughter was sitting perfectly still and perfectly quiet. She was wearing a blue sleeveless dress, holding her bent forearm, bewildered by what had happened. Then, she looked up at me and cried. I held her and tried to comfort her, but I could feel myself fading fast. As the medics looked her over, they doubted the seriousness of her injury because she wasn’t crying. “She’s in shock,” I wimpered, mentally flicking them off, but physically slumping over onto the cot alongside my daughter.

I wanted so much to be brave. I wanted to be Sally Field in Steel Magnolias demanding the doctors take care of my hurt child. But, I wasn’t brave. I was lying on the cot pale, dizzy and sweating. When the guy turned her arm over, he finally saw the break. That’s when they put her on the stretcher and whisked her into the ambulance. The entire ride, I held her hand and alternated reciting the Lord’s Prayer and the words, “I will not faint” in my head.

I am a fainter. I come from a long line of fainters. My grandpa, aunts, cousins, we are all big, fat fainters. When faced in a situation of physical pain, extreme illness, or duress, we pass out. Here are some of the times I have fainted: 8^th grade health class watching a drunk driving video, JC Penney’s while sick, ankle sprain, watching a kid who had been stabbed going into an ambulance, my first gyno exam, work breakroom while 8 months pregnant, the ER when my son dislocated his elbow, the school nurse’s office when my daughter broke her arm, and the doctor’s office when they pancaked her cast. Some would call me a wimp.  But anyone with this embarrassing condition knows it’s not just about being afraid. It’s about being overwhelmed to the point of shutting down. It’s an implosion.

I accept this quirk of mine now. I try to warn people ahead of time if I’m in a potentially faint-worthy situation. I get looks of judgment and sometimes snarkiness, especially from medical professionals, but I brush it off because they have their own fears that I may have no issue with at all. Like the Ortho nurse who told me there are more important things than looking cute when I tried to cover my underwear from showing as I passed out? Well, maybe she has a fear of public speaking or wearing above-the-knee skirts. And I could throw together a speech in a matter of minutes and nail it in a mini-skirt. But, there is no way in hell I could set someone’s bones for a living. Anyway, the important thing is I don’t avoid situations that could make me faint. I look away when necessary. I breathe. I recite things in my head. I have been known to hum “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.” But I don’t run away and hide from situations that scare me. That’s not the kind of example I want to set for my kids.

A few days ago, I was out having drinks with one of my favorite mamas when I got a phone call from home. My daughter had re-broken her arm just three weeks after getting the cast removed. Apparently, she tripped while reaching for a whoopee cushion, or tripped on a whoopee cushion. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I rushed home to find her once again holding her bent forearm and crying. I took a deep breath. I ran up the stairs, picked her up and carried her to the car. I carefully strapped her in and squeezed in beside her. While my husband drove us to the hospital, I patted her head and told her over and over again how much I loved her and how we would get through this. I held her hand as she got x-rays and looked at the bone protruding from her little forearm. And when they manipulated her arm to place the splint, I bent down beside her and told her it would be over soon. The pain, the fear, the disappointment, it all passes, eventually. And when it does, she will get back on the monkey bars again. And if I’ve done my job right, she will have another go at the whoopee cushion, too. Let’s hope so.