Two broken arms
A dramatic coda to the school year
Two of the kids’ afterschool programs have ended, but Monday’s arts and crafts, Tuesday’s LEGO, and Wednesday’s cooking each have one more session. There’s no school on Thursday, Field Day is on Friday, but just for grades K-2, each for a staggered three hours, pending the rain. On Sunday, the school PTA is hosting a party on the neighborhood blacktop, but for grade 2, it’s 11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. and for grade 4, it’s 12:30-2. At 3 p.m., Ada’s friend’s band is playing for another end of year party a few blocks to the west, followed by a bowling-themed birthday party, that Ada will attend, despite breaking both her wrists last weekend.
On Tuesday she’ll go to the orthopedist to determine if she can, in fact, go to sleep away camp, with fewer than two hard casts on her arms. The camp believes this would preclude her only from doing archery and horseback riding. It seems like it would also preclude her from, say, tennis, volleyball, basketball, and possibly swimming, but the nurse insists upon her “deep experience with casts,” and who am I to argue? I would love anyone else’s expertise if they have it on offer.
The fractured wrists are the results of a rollerskating incident last week, the night before I left for a five day trip to Mexico City. I didn’t see the fall, but I heard her friend P racing down the sidewalk, yelling for either me or Jacob to come, quickly. Ada lay prostrate on the ground, adjacent to the playground, with a skinned knee, iridescent skates with blue glitter laces flopping side to side. A woman with a baby hovered over Ada, who insisted, from her position, that she focus on her baby first. Jacob loosened the skates and Ada walked home three blocks in her socks, whimpering that she couldn’t move her arms, blood dripping down her leg.
Because the possibility that an already relentless moment of logistical density might be made more chaotic by injury, we proceeded to put Ada’s arms on ice packs, and insist that she’d be fine by the morning. She wasn’t, as it turned out, but was thrilled, after urgent care and the ER, to get two casts by three attentive man-nurses, where either the caretaking or the casting seemed to erase the pain from her memory.
I received all of these updates—the X-rays, the urgent care alerts, the notice that my child was now being seen by a paediatric trauma specialist— through the free airplane wifi en route to Mexico City. I’d gotten on board that morning, feeling deeply guilty at exiting on a child in pain, and on Jacob while this debacle was unfolding, but also knowing that if one parent is better suited to deal with the medical establishment, it is certainly not me. (A strong proclivity for fainting!)
For the next few days I sat with the idea of not being able to care for my injured child, and whenever I FaceTimed, the kids were sprawled body on body on body on top of Jacob. The kids were surrounded by cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents. Jacob sent a picture of them at the park, friends lined up in front of Ada feeding her strawberries one-by-one while her arms hung in slings. Another set of friends stopped by with bubble tea for the kids. Other friends sent well wishes and check-ins over text, having seen Ada with her double slings shuffling down the sidewalk. They asked about how *I* was doing, and when I looked at my gloriously fresh fish taco and agua fresca from the POV of a bustling market in Mexico City, it was hard to say that I was anything but fine.
Jacob made the bold decision to host a barbecue in the park the day after the incident, a plan that had come into formation beforehand. He wheeled the supplies over in a big wagon, the kids ambling alongside. I worried from afar that it would all be too much—physically, emotionally, but it was buoying. Her cast filled up with signatures, friends helped her navigate the park, and any food or drink she could possibly request showed up within minutes.
At school, friends mobilized to help carry her backpack and lunchbox, assist with lunch and schoolwork, and make sure she always had a sharpie nearby. When I returned, at last, from the trip, the broken arms were old news. I was among the last to add my name to the plaster, in a special VIP spot she’d saved on each arm, and she’d regained enough independence and finger movement that the requests were few and far between.
Ada delights, as it turns out, in being cared for, and as it turns out, there is nothing more uplifting, than knowing your child is being cared for in your absence. Two fractured wrists from rollerskating is both a rite of passage for the child, and certainly a rite of passage for the mother, to trust in all the people who find joy in caring.
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Recommendations:
Rainy rec: Because it literally will not stop raining, this Weatherman Kids Umbrella is the best umbrella for smaller children. Easy to open/close, bright colors, reflective, strong. Julian asks to take this with him on any day of potential rain because he enjoys it so much.
To see in NYC: Passengers at PAC NYC (aka the marble cube across from the 9/11 memorial), an incredible show full of acrobatics, circus, song, dance, music, from the Montreal-based group The 7 Fingers. Up through June 29th.
To read: The World Has Always Been on Fire by Anne Helen Petersen about the complexity of creating cogent narrative in these times. I’m fascinated by the deep variability of narrative creation and what it does to serve the narrator, and this (and the comments) dig into this complexity.
Currently reading: Hot Milk by Deborah Levy (thanks to the many book recs you all shared with me last time) about a twenty-something daughter who has traveled with her mother to a clinic in Southern Spain to treat her mother’s mysterious ailments. So much visceral tension to their relationship, and their respective needs.
Enjoying: Adults on Hulu, the new comedy about a group of twenty-something friends living in a group house in Queens navigating adulthood. I’m interested in how representations of different age groups in shows has shifted decade to decade. This show takes on a lot of “how gen Z talks about identity.”
To watch: The new Talking Heads Psycho Killer video with Saoirse Ronan directed by Mike Mills.
Recs, please:
Where do people get sunglasses they love these days? Bonus points if for non-white faces and I’m not cool enough to wear the 90s style glasses.
Fave summer recipes? Need to shake things up with the seasonal produce.
What a precious piece. Thanks for sharing. Sorry about Ada's arms!
I've been getting sunglasses from Knockaround. Their Paso Robles series fit my Asian face very well!
Have you seen the sunglasses from Sardine? Women owned, classic but with a really fun twist!