I’ve lost my sleep.

I was one of those people who could sleep anywhere, have even slept on an x-ray machine once. But the past ten days have been terrible, and I just can’t sleep.

And there’s a reason. My daughter, on the day she turned two and a half, got burnt with hot tea. It happened in a flash, and it was horrible. Horrible, horrible.  I didn’t know how badly tea can burn, but now I do.

But, the good thing is that now she’s healed well, after many visits to the pediatrician and other doctors. She got it mostly on her chest, but could have been her face, eyes…anything.

The first few days I kept wondering why this happened, and the image replayed itself in my mind endlessley, like a bad film on repeat, and the more I’d try and get it out of my mind, the more it would persist.  Then, I looked at my daughter and realized that she was far braver than me, for she, even with her would, all wrapped up in bandage, was running around the house as before.

It was then that I told myself to snap out of it, and it was then that I stopped asking why this happened, and thanked God for what did not, because it could have been much much worse.

She’s a trooper I told her and she smiled. When I took her for her bandage changes, she cried, obviously, but not much, and kept telling me, all the while, what a good girl she was. “Mama, I am a good girl”, she’d say through her tears, trying hard to put up a brave front while the doc cut her bandage and cleaned her wound. I wanted to hold her and cry but I had to be brave for her, for she was looking to me for support. I clenched my teeth and didn’t let a tear fall out of my eye, not in front of her at least. She kept repeating how good she was some fifty times while the dressing was being done. It was heart wrenching to watch her do this, she was doing it for she was scared, and hoped that if she was good, she’d not get hurt. This from a two year old.

One underestimates one’s children. I didn’t know my daughter, my little delicate doll, who would cry if she spotted a life size Winnie the Poo at a birthday party, had such fortitude in her. She went with me to the doctors without as much as a peep out of her, and when there she complied better than any adult I know. She’d turn, sit, stand, lie, as the doc said. When I gave her medication she’d open her mouth and gulp it down without any resistance. She was unreal, and I salute her for it. I would have not been this good had it happened to me.

The worst is now over and she’s on the mend.

Now I need to find my sleep.