At 7:30 in the morning, I watched my daughter get on the school bus like I normally do. I poured myself a cup of coffee and plopped down in front of the computer for a bit of early morning work. At 8:30 I heard a tapping at my door and was mildly shocked to see the face of my daughters’ school principal staring back at me. Knowing my daughter the way I do, I must confess “Oh no, now what did she do” briefly passed through my mind until I opened the door. With obvious strain and concern on her face, the principal proceeded to tell me my daughter, the one who had been smiling less than an hour before, had collapsed at school and stopped breathing. She assured me that my child was indeed breathing again and on her way to the local hospital. I suppose I looked something like a deer caught in the glare of headlights as I stood there with my hands stopped in mid air, unsure of what to do with themselves. I do have a vague recollection of saying something like, “Okay, okay, I’ll be right there, I can do this, I’m on top of it” or something quite close to that. You would think that I would have already had some plan of action in anticipation of such a day. I guess I’m just not that kind of mom. I think I walked around my house at least three times looking for my shoes and found them right by the door where I had left them.
You know, I remember that sour feeling of panic and the bitterness of tears rising up within me and I knew I had to push it aside. It truly felt like one of those moments when you were trying to concentrate on something while your small child squawked “mom, mom, mom” over and over again, and you knew you had to put aside their needs for just that moment, while you finished your task at hand. I know I made the conscious effort to push aside my emotions and focus on the task at hand. I suppose part of me was still in denial, having not laid eyes on my daughter yet, some part of me kept saying it was all a mistake, that it wasn’t that serious.
