yesterday jasper nearly was very badly hurt.
we were walking towards park n’ shop (me to shop and the kids to go the park) and jasper broke from my grasp and trotted a few feet ahead of me. i let him go. gary was holding sela’s hand, i had cary’s sweet little paw, and jasper was at the front.
behind us there was the #28 bus. buses in hong kong do go notoriously fast but it was my child that darted out into the middle of the street. i saw him turn at the crosswalk and said, "stop, jasper" but he didn’t. he took a step out into the street and then another.
i let go of carys’ hand and lunged at jasper. someone screamed. it wasn’t me. i watched this observer scream. gary also pulled at jasper and because he went around (i tried to pull jasper over the waist high bars) he got to him. and then i felt like vomitting. did he really come close to dying? why were all these people watching us? a mum i know passed by and put her hand on my shoulder. i appreciated that.
jasper. i swalled the lump of vomit and tears in my throat and looked at him. tried to give a lecture but he burst into tears. i crossed the street with gary and delivered the kids to the playground. it was AWFUL. those are the only words for it, folks.
i went about my shopping, and was nervy and cross. i wanted to poke my fingers in a mango and feel the flesh under my fingernails. you would think, i would be delicate and gentle with the precious mangp but i was just so angry. what if he had been hit.
i was so upset i even forgot to be shocked at the appallingly high grocery bill.
i came home and told charles (who is in india today) what had happened. he made me feel better.
i told someone else what had happened and she said, "well, you aren’t a bad mum."
i had never thought of that. me, a bad mum?"
and, she continued, it’s not because you have so many kids. you have good control of the kids.
if you saw a child get hit by a car and saw that the mum had lots of kids, would you think "oh, she couldn’t control them?"
new thought and possibly, once i get over my anger at jasper surviving his early preemie days only to die for not listening to me and being an idiot, a nice new paranoid thought to creep me into the bell jar.
