{"id":1391,"date":"2006-04-04T21:12:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-04T21:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2006\/04\/scratching-the-surface\/"},"modified":"2006-04-04T21:12:00","modified_gmt":"2006-04-04T21:12:00","slug":"scratching-the-surface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2006\/04\/scratching-the-surface\/","title":{"rendered":"Scratching the Surface"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is there anything worse than worrying about your child’s safety and wellbeing? I don’t think so. Tonight I am getting Nat out of the shower, trying to shepherd Ben in, when I notice red streaks across Nat’s left shoulder, onto his chest, in the configuration of a hand. Cold claws in my stomach, twist of dread, then, “Nat! What is this?”<\/p>\n

“Yes,” he says, which is how he answers any question. “Mommy will go away.”
“No, Nat, I want to know what is this? How did this happen?”
He can’t answer these kinds of open-ended questions. He thinks I know the answer, and says, “Yes.” And then, “Mommy go away.”
I study the welts and want to cry. He knows this. He looks alarmed. He thinks he’s in trouble. He can’t stand my histrionics. But I want to pull him to me and make those ugly marks go away. I can no more pull him to me than I can make him talk to me. It would be inappropriate, (he is naked, holding a towel) and he would not like it: he has already told me twice to leave him alone.<\/p>\n

Where did these marks come from? Did someone do this to him, or did he do it to himself? He is not beyond self-injurious behavior. He used to bite his arm all the time; thank God he almost never does that now. So why the scratches? No incident reports in the notebook, no phone call about today.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I wonder about his bus drivers. Would they hurt him? But then, would he go smiling into the bus if they did?<\/p>\n

In fact, he smiles so much these days, I have to figure the most obvious: he did it to himself. Ned takes a look at it. He looks at me, and shrugs. Dry skin, maybe?<\/span> I sigh, and relief starts to crackle through me, as I realize this is probably the cause. “Okay, Nat, do you want some lotion on it?”<\/p>\n

“Yes,” he says and eagerly goes into the bathroom with me, watching, enthralled as I smeared Aquifor on his skin. I rub the gloppy ointment in, hoping to soothe whatever it is and whatever caused it, choked by my inadequacy, and all of the pent-up love I feel for this child of mine that I can never quite express to him.
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Is there anything worse than worrying about your child’s safety and wellbeing? I don’t think so. Tonight I am getting Nat out of the shower, trying to shepherd Ben in, when I notice red streaks across Nat’s left shoulder, onto his chest, in the configuration of a hand. Cold claws in my stomach, twist of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-mr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}