Then I found out that my husband's other cousin, whom I love, and her husband, also much love, were coming along as well. Suddenly this was a family get together where my absence would be noted and commented on. I asked my twelve year old and my ten year old if they would be sad if I did not go. My twelve year old said that it would be sad because I would be all alone. After I wiped the tears of laughter from my eyes, I explained that the state of being alone is a much valued way to be when you are old and married with three kids. They did not understand, and the sad puppy dog looks were more than I could bear. So I made the decision to go.
The setting was beautiful, a gravel pit, lots of sunshine, many piles of rock and gravel for kids to play in and four wheeler around on. A beaver lived in the gravel pit and would swim around and flap his tail at us. Beautiful. Kids were dashing about on the four wheelers and dirt bikes leaving the adults mostly alone so that we could sit and visit. It was wonderful...until the two nine year old boys went out on four wheelers, then came back in under five minutes. Not a good sign. My nephew came bounding up to me informing me that my son hurt himself. Now, I love my nine year old. He's great, but he is very much like his mother in that he way over dramatizes any sort of injury. So I got up and walked over to where my son was parking his four wheeler picturing the small scratch or slightly skinned knee that would inevitably make up this "injury". Then I saw the blood dripping off of his elbow and his ankle. Apparently he decided to drive through a very bushy/small tree filled area and a large branch gouged the heck out of his ankle. The bloody elbow was merely a trifling injury next to the gaping wound on his leg.
It amazes me how calm you can become when faced with a serious injury. My adrenaline kicked in and I grabbed the first aid kit, my husband, who is awesome in an emergency sat him down and began peppering him with questions. "Where were you when you got hurt? How big was the branch? Was it coming out of the ground or a tree?" and so on and so forth in order to keep his mind off of what I was doing to his leg. The two of us worked in perfect tandem with calm voices and hands to clean and bandage his leg and elbow, while inside I was thinking "Holy crap that looks like it hurts like holy heck!!" If it had been me with a cut like that I would have passed out from the pain and the sight of all the blood.
Of course my patience and uber-calmness only lasted for so long. Twenty minutes after we had patched him up when he was still screaming like a gut-shot hog, I kind of ran out. I explained very patiently that if he continued to cry it would cause his blood to pump faster and make his would throb all the more. Then when that didn't work I just told him to put a sock in it.
