The Little Key to My Heart
The clavicle is a little bone in the shoulder area. It’s also called the collar bone.
The clavicle is the easiest bone in your whole body to break.
The clavicle comes from the Latin clavicula for “little key.”
The clavicle in the Boy’s body is fractured.
***
“Mommy!”
No one likes to hear this cry in the middle of the night. I stumbled into his bedroom and discovered that somewhere between sweet dreams and good morning, The Boy had rolled off his bed. He was crying rather fiercely, but I attributed the cries more to the confused arousal from sleep than actual physical pain. I swept him off the floor, gave him a kiss, and told him to go back to sleep. He did.
The next morning, he complained of pain in his neck/shoulder area. I figured stiff neck or some type of muscle spasm and gave him a hot wrap until he left for school. I sent an email to the teacher and asked that she not let him participate in PE. She told me after school that he was so uncomfortable, she wound up telling him to lie down and rest for the latter half of the school day.
He spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in mild discomfort. I patiently administered kisses and hugs and all the frozen blueberries his heart desired instead of accomplishing anything on my To Do list (but hey, I usually ignore it for lesser reasons than this) and hoped he would be fine by morning.
Morning arrived, and pain was clearly still in-house. He cried to move, he cried to change, he cried in the bath. Husband, the man who never wants to go to the doctor, suggested we take The Boy in for a visit.
***
I take The Boy into the examination room where we have been so many times for eczema outbreaks he knows immediately that I will be reading Curious George to him. That George, calling the fire department, escaping from prison, and flying away with balloons. He so crazy.
Good Doc comes in, I brief her on the situation, and she says, “I bet he fractured his clavicle.” She touches him here and there until her prodding produces the six-year-old exclamation she’s looking for: “Ouch!”
She nods again. “Yeah, the clavicle.”
She puts him in a sling and sends me to the imaging center, where I excite The Boy with the idea of “cameras that take pictures of bones!”
The X-rays are taken and the doctors concur: yes, a clavicle fracture. The Boy is so awed by the X-rays they make photocopies for him as a parting gift.
I hold the black and white paper in my hands, these pictures of his bones. I have another stack of black and white copied pictures of him. His sonograms. Over six years ago, I spent hours gazing at blurred images of a head, a heart, a footprint. Whenever I looked at them, I felt incredibly aware of his life inside me, his movements, his kicks. I look at his x-rays now, and six years later, I’m still aware of that kick in my side, that extra flutter in my heart. He’s grown so much, but he’s still so fragile. Just like me.
We show up to school late, and I walk him to class. Just before we reach it, he lets go of my hand and says he doesn’t need to hold it. “You don’t need to come in,” he says, but he does give me a big hug. I watch from the doorway and he enters his classroom, arm in a sling, brandishing the x-ray copies, saying “these are my bones.” There are oohs and aahs.
He goes to class with a fractured clavicle and gets himself some street cred.
I go home with a fractured heart and get myself some mom cred.
***
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Ouch! Poor little dude.
My boy stopped holding my hand and accepting public kisses from me in Kindergarten. Five years later, he still snuggles next to me on the couch when none of his peeps are around. I’ll take what I can get.
Aaah, poor little guy. And poor mommy. I hope he gets feeling better soon! My 8 year old likes to sit next to me and watch The Bachelor (and no, not really sure this is a good thing) but he snuggles me and tells me who he would pick. I love those snuggle moments.
You are quite the writer. This is a wonderful example of the tug between being happy of the maturation and the loss of times gone by. Give the little one a soft hug from all of us in cyberland and wish him a speedy recovery.
Yes, my eldest daughter broke her clavicle - went over the top of the bikes handlebars = very nasty and jolly painful. I think guilt just goes with the territory. It’s a pretty extreme way of getting street cred, but he certainly stepped up to the plate. Let’s hope you don’t have another visit for a while.
Best wishes
As much as my young one loves to fall and bump into things, I’m surpised he hasn’t broken his clavicile or some other bone.
I remember how guilty I felt as a teen, when the little girl I was babysitting, jumped out of a swing and broke hers. But when my younger brother broke his, back in the day, it was kind of funny. We were youngsters, 7-10. My brother, who was a little skinny, runt of a kid, had been playing touch football and having the game of his young life, when a neighborhood kid we called, “Big Junior” fell on him. That pretty much ended my brother’s interest in football. Even after his clavicle mended, he became strictly a baseball and basketball kind of guy (smile).
This is so sweet, and he sounds so much like my son. I can picture him brandising the xrays.
I think you deserve a lot of Mom cred.
oh, oof. that’s a painful way to earn any cred at all.
Thanks for stopping by my place. Imagine me throwing you beads and even a few stuffed animals (if I can wrench them away from my daughter)
and I checked out your “me, me, me” page - and your Harry Potter song? I think I may be in love.
I look forward to the post about all being perfectly well again! Nothing like realizing that you let your son walk around with a broken clavicle… Glad he’s going to be all right.
Your poor son! My kids used to fall out of bed all the time. They were used to sleeping on the floor and found the whole idea of a bed too much to cope with. But at least he’s got a bunch of x-rays to show around. And a cool new sling.
Ahhh, poor little guy. He is probably the coolest kid in class though with those xray copies!