Swiss Cheese and Circumstance

March 9, 2015

Not long ago, my home town was shaken by the tragic death of a toddler in the most unbelievable, heart breaking circumstances. All over town people were talking about it, voicing their anger and their disbelief, while somewhere in the suburbs a family drowned in the grief and silence left in the wake of their lost baby boy. A mother had her world fall away from her under her feet while carrying the weight of a town’s ‘two cents worth’. Thousands of comments, well-wishes, and calls for justice made by people she had saved, made by people she might recognise on the street, and by people who don’t even know what colour her hair is.

I’m not going to talk about her any more. I’ll talk about me and Alice instead.
 
Alice got sick on Christmas day last year. It was her first ever fever, the first time she’d gone off food and the first time she just wanted to lie on me all day and sleep. It was the first time she was determined to sleep with me at night, too, which meant her discomfort and fever kept us all up for most of the night, every night, day after day.
Her first unexplained sudden rash came two days later, and it spread quickly. It was holiday season and my doctor was closed which added to my growing concern.
The day before New Year’s Eve I found an open doctor’s practice and begged them over the phone to find an appointment to see my girl that day. Luckily they could squeeze me in, and I had less than an hour to get Alice ready, fed, and in the car to drive the thirty kilometres from my house to the practice.

Am I a bad mother yet?

 When we were finally ready to go, I sat Alice in the car seat with a cold flannel. Her shoelace was undone so I tied it again. I don’t normally care too much about the position of the sunshades on the windows, but Alice was so hot and I didn’t want the sun on her at all. So I used two precious minutes to meticulously re-position the shades. I kissed her forehead, closed the door, and walked around to the driver’s seat.
I drove at 105 all the way in to town. I drove at 57 in town where I could. I just wanted to get to the doctor’s and have them tell me that Alice was okay.
Am I a bad mother yet? Do I deserve public ridicule yet?

When we finally arrived at the doctors and I opened Alice’s door, I realised that I hadn’t done up Alice’s car seat belt. Not only that, Alice was actually sitting on the belt, so she wasn’t even sitting properly in her seat at all. My heart dropped in to my stomach, and the ‘what if’ hit me like a brick in the face. Not the ‘what if’ I’d been pulled over by a cop and they’d discovered what I’d done, it was the ‘what if I’d crashed’? What if, because of my choice to speed and take a chance with our lives as it was, I lost control and Alice was thrown from the car? I felt like I’d dodged a bullet and I couldn’t fathom how I had forgotten to do the very basic action of fastening a belt. An action that, in the wrong circumstances, would mean life or death for my baby.
Be it by God’s good grace or sheer luck, I was given a free pass. No one saw what I had done, Alice wasn’t hurt, and you can be sure I triple check the seat belt every time we get in the car now.
Am I a bad mother now? I broke the law, for god’s sake. This is the first time I have really talked about it and even as I write, I feel panicked by what I had done. Am I a bad mother?

 You know me, you know how seriously I take my job of protecting and nurturing my own child as well as the children I teach. If Alice had died, would you console me? What if you saw the headline, ‘baby dies in crash, mother ‘forgot’ to fasten belt’. Now am I a bad mother? Do you still feel sorry for me?



I have read that life, or rather, the series of events that lead up to an event, is a little like Swiss cheese. It’s full of holes all over the place, the random nature of the holes means you can pop a toothpick in each one and eventually hit cheese before you get to the bottom. However, by complete chance, there are rare occasions when those random holes in each slice of cheese align and the toothpick falls right through.
Let me explain;
Hole one - Alice has been sick for three days and I’m exhausted, having had very little rest.
Hole two – I’m stressed because we’ve got no time to waste, I’m anxious for the well-being of Alice, I’m worried because we’re going to a different doctor.
Hole three – I lose focus with the flannel, the shoes.
Hole four – something out of routine happens, in this case I’m preoccupied with the sunshades. Again, because I’m concerned for Alice’s health.
Hole five – My decision to add five kilometres to the speed limit to cut half a minute off travel time.
And then my toothpick hits cheese. The weather was good for driving, I didn’t meet any erratic travellers or drunk drivers, my car was road-worthy and got me to the doctors safely.
Does it make me a bad mother?
The woman I mentioned at the beginning had very similar looking Swiss cheese to what I’ve described for Alice and I. Except for her all the holes aligned, right down to the end.

Being completely responsible for a person and having to protect them from a dangerous world, bad people, human error and divine circumstance is bloody scary.

Tell me. Tell me to my face. Does my mistake make me not love Alice anymore? Am I a bad mother? Do I deserve public ridicule now?

And I have to ask myself – am I brave enough to share this moment of utter disbelief at my own forgetfulness and feeling of stolen luck in order to highlight how easy it is to judge someone else? To ignore their story, their circumstance, the series of events that lead to their outcome, however tragic? Am I brave enough to point out how easy it is to say ‘that would never happen to me’ and ‘I’d never do that to my kids’ when, in actual fact, circumstance and human error means that, heaven forbid, you might?

It is human to charge forward with judgement. It is humane to strive for understanding. But to go forth with compassion and love, that is divine.

And for god’s sake. Give someone a hug, will you?