Oh, the irony!

So, yesterday, I had the honor of reaching out in a national way on Lisa Belkin's NY Times blog "The Motherlode," asking about why so many of the mothers I know (including myself) have needed or do need anti-anxiety or antidepressant medication.

Yesterday was a big day for many reasons, not the least of which was that blog post. I was nervous about the Motherlode readers' potential reactions. As it turns out, I have been really pleasantly surprised at the resulting thoughtful discussion.

Around lunchtime yesterday, though, I was still really nervous. That's when I arrived at my first grader's classroom to escort groups of his classmates to the media center to check out library books. It's one of the jobs I do as a volunteer since the school had to eliminate assistants this year due to budget cuts.

Herding six children to the media center to check out books is much like herding proverbial cats, but we were getting it done. Then, when I was walking back to the classroom with the first group, I stepped off the sidewalk with my right foot and tripped over my left foot. Because it is still in the 80s here, I was wearing flip-flops, and my exposed big toe was sliced open on the concrete.

I was immediately in a world of pain, but I tried to keep it together. By the time we reached the classroom, though, I was failing miserably. My toe was open and bleeding -- all over the classroom floor. One little girl started to cry. Little boys had their hands over their mouths. The entire class of eighteen children leaped from their desks and encircled my toe. "Mrs. S, Mrs. S, she's bleeding all over your floor! You don't allow blood in the classroom!" they cried. Incredibly embarrassed, I wrapped the toe in tiny band-aids and somehow muddled through two more groups of first graders.

Last night, I was exhausted. I am in charge of American Education Week at my children's school this week, and it includes a breakfast for ten crossing guards and bus drivers and a luncheon for 80 school staff members and faculty, among other duties. This is my Big Week. I took a hot bath with my toe, now wrapped in gauze and Neosporin and still throbbing, in the air. I planned to go to bed very early.

Just after I emerged from the bath, Husband left the room to gather the two youngest boys and take them up to bed. That's when I heard scurrying from the kitchen, then a crash. Broken glass. I imagined that someone had knocked a picture off the kitchen wall. I heard Firstborn say, "You are so dead." Then I heard Husband.

There are a few sounds that strike fear in my heart: the phone call from the school nurse. The phone call from my mother, choking out words through tears to tell me someone has been hurt or someone is sick. The sound that strikes deepest in my heart, though, is when my husband -- usually infuriatingly calm and slow-moving -- yells my name from another room of the house, loudly and urgently.

That's what he did last night. When I rounded the corner and looked in the kitchen, he was holding C.'s arm, and there was a long gash on it. And blood. C. had run through the kitchen, tripped on a chair, and flown straight through a windowpane in our kitchen, hand and arm first.

Husband later criticized me for wigging out [*Note: Husband has since written in indignantly that he was simply noting that I had to throw gauze at him from twenty feet away lest I faint at the sight of the wound close up and what's me to explain he is not a total jerk. Duly noted.], but while I do admit to freaking out and not being at all good around blood, I got the three of us to the ER pretty quickly and effectively. The result: at 1 AM, one nurse was wrapping up C.'s newly-stitched up arm (the sight of which I might never get over) and applying ointment to his myriad cuts and scrapes, and one nurse was irrigating my still throbbing toe, which apparently had chunks of gravel inside it.

C. was very, very lucky. He could have easily cut an artery, a tendon, a nerve. He managed to avoid all of it, but I will tell you what: the mental image of my child's arm folding open really might be my best diet weapon ever.

So I can wonder why mothers like me need anti-anxiety medication. I think I have my personal answer.