Trying to Convince Poison Control You’re a Good Parent
You try to sound calm—but not too calm.
When they ask your daughter’s weight, you sound knowledgeable, remembering her check-up stats from the pediatrician on the refrigerator door. You don’t tell them you Googled “what to do if your toddler drinks nail polish” before calling, that you found a list of toxic ingredients—Formaldehyde, Dibutyl Phthalate, and Toluene—and that you imagine the nail polish coting her insides.
You don’t tell them that you whispered God please let her be all right when you realized what happened, or that this is the second time you’ve had to call them, and if there is any calm in your voice it’s because it turned out OK when she ate chrysanthemums.
You don’t tell them that she’s your youngest child and more adventurous than the other two, as if her birth order explains your carelessness. Nor do you tell them that you’re an oldest child, the one responsible for a younger brother and sister when you were growing up, like that day when the house was empty, so you took them to your neighbor who supplied cookies and cartoons until your mom showed up, and how you had great parents, the best, but even good parents let their guards down.
You don’t tell them she looks like her mother and her repulsion at the chemicals brings double duress because you can see your wife as a kid, imagine her suffering, like the story she once told of her older sister pulling your wife’s arm out of socket and you winced at the thought of her horrific pain.
You don’t tell them that you have never forgotten the times your children hurt. Like when your newborn son turned yellow with bilirubin and spent the night at the hospital, and you wanted to scream at the nurses who kept drawing blood from his feet and so poorly that by morning his heels looked butchered. And years later when you watched a group of boys ignore your son, how he tucked his chin when no one would talk to him, and how it replays in your mind.
You don’t tell them that you realize how much is beyond your control, how late at night you read the news and social media stories about accidents, illnesses, injuries, school shootings, street shootings, grocery store shootings, cataloging the horrors that can come to your children, and that you haven’t watched a super hero movie in years but in the last one you saw Bruce Banner says, “That’s my secret. I’m always angry,” and you feel just like that: you always worry about your children, and hulkish fear seethes below the surface, always threatening to break out.
You don’t tell them that when you were younger you never really imagined being a parent but it’s given you purpose, and you pride yourself on it, even though you’re an old dad, sure to be confused for their grandfather, eventually. And though you try not to be obnoxious about your kids, they show up in your emails, conversations, classroom lectures.
You don’t say that having them sleep in your arms when they were babies was one of the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen—the delicacy, sweet breath, and terrifying vulnerability—like they were the first children in the world.
You don’t say that your kids wake you up to wonder, but no one prepares you for the grief of missing their earlier selves—your son reading out loud, your daughter ballet dancing across the kitchen floor, all the songs and stories—and how you know you’ll eventually measure their growth in distance from you, and that having all these memories will be like carrying whole worlds that have vanished.
When Poison Control asks, you just describe what you see: a two-year-old girl splattered with nail polish but otherwise fine, and at the end of the call, when they assure you she’s OK, you say thank you. You sound grateful, which is easy because it’s true.
