When the call came in, I was toweling off the water from both the shower I’d just taken as well as the lingering after-effects of a 90 minute Bikram Yoga class, where yoga poses are done in 108 degree heat. Clumsily trying to push the “accept” button on my softly buzzing Treo, I heard a voice and knew immediately it was a teacher at my daughter’s school. After I heard: “there’s been an accident”, I think I went into shock. I suspect this because all I heard afterward were select phrases: “head injury”… “eyes rolling back in her head”… “ambulance”…”hospital”.

I always wondered how I would react when an emergency arose for my own child. Having ten siblings, broken bones and bruises were as attention grabbing as yesterday’s news. With all that experience as an observant elder sibling behind me, I imagined myself calm, cool and able to see the situation from a symbolic and spiritual perspective.

So when I got in my car and started sobbing and screaming “my baby, my baby!!!”, I realized that old saying is true: “No matter how old your child is (Ana has newly turned four) she will always be your baby.” I also remembered that no matter how much training you get in life, you don’t know what will happen until you get there. That’s how it was when Dad died too. Prostate cancer slowly morphing to his bone, Dad had a very long season of death preparation. I said my good-byes. I grieved before he breathed his last. I was fully prepared…until he died. Then I cried like a baby for my daddy. Sheesh! Losing a parent is like joining a club to which you definitely don’t want to be a member. It turns out, so is the first emergency room visit for your child.

As I flew around the corner toward the emergency room, it looked like someone put a bullet hole in the side of my baby’s head where blood continued to leak even after it had been properly mopped. I didn’t know we that much skin on top of our bones. In her usual Aries fashion, Ana had been racing with her friends at school, proving she was the fastest, when she tripped and her head crashed into the window sill.

I reached out and pulled Ana into my arms, and held her tightly as she cried. Then she said, “Mommy, is the doctor going to come and put my head back together?” “Yes, Sweetie, they will put your head back together” I replied as I sat down from the dizziness that accompanied that thought. After I calmed down, I talked Ana though each step of what would happen. Then I said, “Dr. Ana, I just fell and hit my head and it split open. Will you fix it for me?” Dr. Ana got to work on me so that when the doctor finally did arrive, there were no tears as they superglued her head back together.

“So who cried more,” the nurse finally inquired, “mommy or child?” “Definitely mommy,” I replied arrogantly, thinking that no matter how terrible Ana cried in the ambulance, it couldn’t have rivaled my anguish on her behalf and mine. Then the nurse said to me, “Don’t worry. This is only the beginning. You have another 15 years of this.” I sighed loudly.

I learned a lot about myself in this new experience. While racing through traffic to get to the emergency room, I did have the presence of mind to watch my ego try to get its greedy arms around this situation. First, I wanted to blame someone for “my baby” having to go to the hospital. “Why weren’t the teachers watching her more closely? How could they let the children run so fast?” (I heard another voice in my head say: “oh, yeah, try to stop 3 and 4 year olds from running – that works”) As I sped to the hospital in the pouring rain, I was upset with how slowly and safely people in front of me were driving: “I don’t care how old you are,” I yelled to the back end of an elderly man’s car, “my baby is in the hospital. Get out of my way!!!” (And to this I heard a softer voice say: “Don’t use this situation as an excuse to hurt or send toxic energy to others.”)

As I ran what seemed a mile to get to Ana, I found myself angrily blaming unnamed engineers for designing the parking lot so far from the emergency room. (While the other voice just said: “wow, I have no idea how to respond to that”) It was fascinating to track how dearly my ego claimed this situation and my emotional state as entitlement to behave anyway I wanted, disregarding anyone else’s feelings. I suspect that this emergency was not the only time that little pattern has appeared in my life!

After a long, emotionally exhausting evening, Ana got up the next day smiling, laughing and wanting to play. When I suggested she be very careful of the large gash on her head (OK, I didn’t put it that way), she nodded and then wanted to jump on the bed. Ugh! Doesn’t she get that this is not about her!?! When she got to the “gross motor room” at school, she ran to the big ball and said, “Mom, watch how I can jump on this,” I smiled briefly, and quickly turned my head away as though someone just showed me the contents of their colon. “OK I have to go now.” I looked at the teachers and said “I can’t watch.” They smiled knowingly. Didn’t Ana realize that her recent past should inform her future as to how to stay safe and avoid pain?

Well, that’s just it. She is too young to make sure her past shapes her future. Ana is in present time. What happened yesterday belongs to yesterday. Now she is here and there is a lovely, very large ball calling to her. While I asked the teachers to keep a careful eye on her – good luck to them! – and they assured me they would, I suddenly didn’t want Ana remembering the scars of the past as a foundation for her behavior in present time. In the end, that’s just a lower therapy bill– one less thing to revisit from her past so she can finally be clear and creative in present time. She’s a great spiritual teacher, my baby.