Last Friday, Mian was out of town for work so I used the next factor in my list of choices: which prayer location and timing fits best with the baby's naptime? Closest and earliest, of course.
How exactly did that once small choice end up breaking the baby's foot? I'll get to that.
So we park in the mosque parking lot, and I'm hurrying the baby because I don't want to be late. We had to backtrack to the car after a few feet because he'd forgotten his snack in the car. A baggie full of raw broccoli. But I can see some of the leadership of our mosque at the top of the stairs, welcoming a well-dressed man as I walk into the building. So I know we've just made it before the sermon (or khutbah) was going to start. I took off my shoes and the baby's shoes - no shoes allowed in the prayer hall - and we walked into the women's section and found an open space to pray. I began to make my initial two rounds of prayer that you're supposed to do when you walk into a mosque; a greeting to the mosque, if you will.
The baby? Well, he loves to make prayers with me. He stands next to me, bows next to me, gets down on his hands and knees and presses his forehead and nose to the ground next to me. He loves it mostly because of how much we praise him for it, and how much all the people around us praise him too. I've been praying with him underfoot since before he could crawl away. Back then he would laugh out loud every time I bent down over him, like it was a game. Now he gets big hugs and kisses and words of amazement afterward when I loudly tell his father or aunts or grandmother that "The baby did such a good job! He made ALL his prayers and was still and quiet for the entire khutbah!"
In anticipation of those accolades, he was standing next to me as I cycled through the various motions of the Islamic prayer as we stood in the first row of the women's section. He was distracted a bit, as was I, when right in front of us in the last row of the men's section - only a wooden fence-like barrier between us - a man making the same prayer began to cause some congestion. Muslims generally try not to walk in front of someone praying, so a small line of men were waiting for him to finish so they could then squeeze past him into the already-fully-occupied space just past him. I looked up a bit and, I'll admit, inwardly shook my head at these men who would not just go to the upstairs or downstairs areas instead of disrupting their fellow worshipers. Then I tried to steel myself against this distraction and re-focus on my prayer.
So I didn't see when one of the men waiting tried to push his way behind the praying man. I didn't see the wooden barrier wobble. I only noticed when I heard the women behind me shout, and I saw the hands of men dart into my field of vision, trying to grab onto so many pounds of wood; falling so fast yet seemingly in slow motion.
I couldn't move fast enough. I instinctively hopped back a few inches. I reached out for the baby. My hands wouldn't get to his shoulders as I pleaded with the air in between us. I was once hit by a truck when I was eleven years old, and I remember time slowing down as I saw the truck headed for me on my bicycle. Each pedal pedal pedal accompanied by my plea to go faster, please faster, just a little bit faster, it's almost here.
I hadn't seen it quickly enough, but I saw it afterwards. The pain in his eyes. His shoulders shaking. My baby boy, who never took an unsure step, who almost never fell even when he was learning to walk, who has always been cautious, certain, careful. Nobody moved. The imam didn't even stop talking over my baby's cries. The impatient man just stared at me, terrified by the look in my eyes as I glared at him while removing the baby's socks. Not even a sorry. No offer to help, not from him or any other man or even any woman. Just one woman coming up behind me to say "They have some ice in the kitchen."
I scooped him up, still wailing. Finally someone from the mosque came to ask me if I needed anything and I asked for some ice. He took me into the kitchen and gave me some ice on a paper towel. I asked for a bag, but he just stared at me blankly and pointed to the baby's fist clutched tight with broccoli. I dumped out his before lunch snack and put the ice inside. A older Pakistani lady preparing lunch to be sold to the prayer goers asked me what happened and then smiled at me, "InshaAllah, I'm sure he will be fine!" I left the kitchen after that. These people didn't know my baby. The didn't know that his shoulders were still shaking. His shoulders never shake. A firm squeeze, a kiss for a boo-boo, that's all it takes. He recovers very fast, and cries about almost nothing. His shoulders never shake.
I sat in the lobby for five or ten minutes. No one offered us a chair, so I propped him up on a table. The very table that would hold the lunches being sold in a few minutes - holding the ice on his foot and watching his shoulders. He never stopped crying. The only person from the mosque I'd seen - the one who'd given us the ice - stood a few feet from me but didn't approach me again. I scooped up my baby again and marched over to him and spat out my words at him as I left "I'm going to take him to see if it's BROKEN or not."
I called the pediatrician, who could see the baby in 30 minutes. I called my husband, who asked to speak to the baby. When I offered the phone to him in the backseat, he cried so hard saying "No, NO! I don't want to talk!" For any of you who know my son, you know how serious that is. For my son, the world begins and ends with his father. He has never chosen ANYthing over a bit of time or affection from his father. He has never refused anything from his beloved Abbu. For me, it was the shoulders. For Mian, it was the phone call. He knew then that this injury must be serious.
The doctor was not convinced. He wouldn't stand on it at all, not even for a second to be weighed, but she said it wasn't in a place you generally see a break and by that time he was coherent enough to tell her that his foot didn't feel good. Plus, perhaps she'd never been in a mosque to know, and I'd forgotten to say, that he hadn't been wearing shoes. She sent us to another office for an x-ray anyway though, "just to be certain."
Two hours later, sitting on the couch at home with his foot propped up on a pillow, an ice pack on his foot, I got the phone call. Broken. First metatarsal non-displaced fracture, possibly second metatarsal as well. Too late on a Friday to see anyone. She suggested we just wait at home all weekend until he could be seen Monday. The bone hadn't moved out of alignment, so it didn't need to be set in the interim. I couldn't do it though - how would he sleep at night? So we went off to the urgent care center to have his foot and leg put in a temporary splint. Our third doctor's office of the day and yet the problem still hadn't begun to be fixed.
He's been fine since then. (I'm a wreck, though.) Very regular doses of over the counter pain medication. Keeping his leg propped up as much as possible. Copious amounts of children's movies and television programming. He never gets to watch TV or movies - we don't even have cable or television service in our home. And now he's spent the better part of three days watching things he didn't even know existed. Dora the Explorer. He already knows the theme song. Dinosaur Train. In a moment of desperation, Angelina Ballerina. Whatever I could find in the "Watch Instantly" section of Netflix.
We also took him out shopping once he started going stir crazy from the couch time. I had to track down the stroller for the first time in two years, but it was a great way to keep him sedentary. Somehow he ended up with a lot of new toys, too. Sympathy from Chachoo and his father, mostly. An entire box full of Legos - wheels and axles only. Chachoo has spent a few hours building Lego cars and helicopters with him so far. Mian bought an RC helicopter and we propped the baby up between two lawn chairs this morning (one for his bottom and one for his leg) while they tried to learn how to fly it. I cannot tell you how much candy and bubblegum he's been able to get from these guys either.
When people ask about our living arrangement I always say that the benefits outweigh any costs. Let me tell you about benefits in an emergency. When you have someone waiting at home to entertain your son with a broken foot while you run out for ice and pain medication. When someone helps you give him his last bath in perhaps the next 6-8 weeks. When there's someone there to carry him between the house and the car when your arms feel like they're about to fall off. I haven't carried this kid around in two years, and he's grown a whole lot since then; my arm muscles haven't kept up.
Somehow the family, toys, TV and candy got us through the weekend. Mian left again for work tonight, he's 7 hours away until next Saturday when he'll be back for little more than 24 hours. I'm manning the ship by myself again. Tomorrow morning I'll start calling around to find a doctor for the baby and hopefully he'll get a cast as soon as possible. I pray his fracture is the simple kind, not in the growth plate and please God don't let it have to be set. I can't imagine how I could be next to him by myself while he has a bone set. I barely survived when he had to have a tick removed once.
I'm so sad and angry. I'm unreasonably upset about his swimming lessons. He was doing so well that he was bumped up to the next level and now he'll have to drop out. One day when he's all grown up and I tell someone that he broke his leg when he was only three, I'll hear something about how "boys will be boys" and it will make me angry all over again. I've had people tell me that my son is the calmest kid they've ever met - boy OR girl. My kid is not the "boys will be boys" type. He doesn't jump off high things, he doesn't run into things or crash into people. He is careful and considering of his actions. You might think it's stupid for me to say that of a three year old but it's true. I doubt he would have ever inflicted something like this on himself.
No, no, someone ELSE went and broke his bones for him. At the mosque, of all places. And now he - we - have to deal with the aftermath.
