5 Kids and 13+ years of parenting and finally it happened. Stitches. Mayhem got stitches.

I looked down at my phone as I rushed around cleaning up from the Monday morning chaos, huh, I just missed the call. Whoops. As I waited for the voicemail to come through Katherine came running down the stairs. “Mayhem fell at school and cut his head, we need to go get him”

I had that feeling in my stomach that says this is a big one. This one matters. And so as we ran around grabbing our things and got into the car, heading for our baby boy, I sent texts to clients letting them know we’d need to reschedule.

My heart pounded as we walked up to the school. I took a deep breath, calmed my papa bear nerves, and walked confidently into the blood-covered front office. There was my tiny baby boy, the youngest of 5, shaking like a leaf, staring off into space, battered and bruised.

*Mayhem waiting on Dad’s lap at the Salt Spring Island Hospital*

Katherine spoke with the school administrators to find out what happened and I quickly assessed the situation. Never have I been more grateful for my Emergency Medical Response training than I was that morning.

He was breathing calmly, he knew what happened, where he was, and his pupils were doing all the right things. I scanned his body. Just the one bandaid oozing blood in the center of his big old forehead, and the evidence of a double nose bleed

“Okay buddy, Dad’s just going to take a little peek under your bandaid to see if we have to go get a Doctor to take another look at it.” I gently peeled the bandaid back and my stomach sank. We were headed to the ER for stitches.

45 minutes later his wound had been closed, but his heart and soul were broken wide open. His broken heart opened up a gently sealed wound of my own.

In fact, since Mayhem’s school yard injury it’s almost all I can think about. I play the story, the details over and over again in my mind. I remember hurting myself like this when I was a kid.

It Wasn’t Stitches But

I was 10ish. It was summer. I was riding my Blue Angel Banana Seat Bicycle. I got it for my birthday that year. I hated it with everything inside me. It was a glaring signafier that I was poor. At least it wasn’t a glaring signifier that I was stuck playing the part of a girl.

All the other kids rode their mountain bikes, and bmx’s and there I was with my 15 year old banana seat bike, the kind where the brakes are engaged when you peddle backwards. Meaning that when you inevitably caught your shoelace in your chain/peddle you were basically fucked. The week before this terrible tragedy occurred. I had to drag my bike home, by foot, until my Grandma could cut my shoelace loose.

When my lace came undone, this time I knew better. I wasn’t going to fall for that trick again… down the hill I went, I’d tie it when I got home.

BAM!!! Parked van. While focusing on my shoelace and the impending doom that would occur if it tangled it’s way into my bike once more, I failed to notice the baby blue minivan with wood paneling parked on the side of the road. The front tire of my bike hit the bumper of the van, catapulting my face at the back windshield, knocking me unconscious.

*Nick holds his 6 year old one week after his hospital visit.*

My friend Ibena rode her bike to my house to get my Grandma. I woke up crumpled on the road, tangled in my bike. Blood dripped steadily from my nose.

I picked my bike up and started hobbling home. As I got closer to my house my Grams came running… Well not like running, running, you know, like how old people sort of shuffle run.

I don’t know what happened next.
It doesn’t live in my memory.

Instead I’m at the hospital with my Mom and Grandma. We’re in the little curtained area. I’ve had x-rays. A fractured forehead, and kneecap. A concussion, and a broken nose. I’m battered and bruised. And yet that’s not really what I remember.

The Trauma Wasn’t The Accident

What I remember is my Mother trashing my father, her ex, for not being there. “How much do you want to bet he doesn’t even show up?” she snapped at my Grandma. “His kid could have died and he doesn’t even care!” she carried on.

And now something that hadn’t even crossed my mind, was all I could think about.

How his ability to leave work at the drop of a hat, and make the 60 minute drive from Toronto to Oshawa was the proof I was looking for to confirm his love for me.

They were divorced long ago. My mom was remarried, redivorced, and 12 or so serious relationships in. My Dad had a new family of his own. And yet, their hate for each other was palpable. It always had been. And that hate translated into my own self loathing.

Both of them hated the half of me that was attached to the other. My mother called me by his name when she was mad at me. “Okay Jefferina” she would taunt. She was quick to point out all his flaws. Any mistake. Somehow thinking it would earn her my loyalty and love, rather than that hate on myself. It taught me to hide the parts of myself that I got from him, when I was with her, and the parts he hated about her when I was with him. Their hate for each other taught me early on to hate myself.

I don’t know if my Dad showed up or not. In my very foggy concussed version of events he did. I needed him to. I needed to be worth showing up for. Something my mom had made abundantly clear she didn’t think I was to him. The truth is though, I may have needed my father to show up to the hospital that day sooo badly that I remember his arrival as we were leaving the hospital to head home, regardless of reality.

The point isn’t whether he was there or not though That’s kind of irrelevant really. The point is that 26 years later, the traumatic part of this childhood memory for me isn’t that I got so terribly hurt that day.

The broken bones, cuts and bruises, and concussion are gone. None of that stuck with me. The part that stuck with me, all these years later, is that my mother hated my father so much that she was willing to openly bet that he didn’t love me enough to show up for me. The part where she didn’t think I was worth showing up for. The part where instead of being loved and held, I was told I was unworthy.

I’m still working my way through healing these parts of me.

Mayhem Got Stitches but His Story Is Different Because

It’s so easy to be friends with my ex-husband.

I decided before asking for a divorce that I would never hate him. No matter what.

I decided that I would always remember the reasons I chose to have kids with him to begin with. That we would always be a family in some way or another. Because I knew he was a good man. A good man who I was about to hurt.

What about my Ex?

*Chris and Nick & Katherine North with their big blended LGBTQ+ family.*

Why is he so invested? Does he also have a “shitty divorce” story too?

On the contrary. I believe (I’ve never asked him, this is just my hypothesis) that Chris is so into us being great co parents and family because his parents loved, and still do love each other so much. It is a privilege he wants for his kids. And so we chose to love each other. We chose to live life a little differently. We chose the family we started together even if that family structure has shifted and changed. So even after 5 years and 13+ years of parenting, Mayhem got stitches. I hope that what he remembers most is not the stitches or the wounded heart but that he was loved through it all by his dads and his mom.