This picture was taken a few weeks ago. Eli was having some minor surgery, but as many of you know, surgery for a 3-year-old is never minor. When your child is taken from you, knocked out, cut on, comes back loopy with tons of chords sticking out of him, it’s never a fun encounter.
I prize myself on being a tough father. I’m that “it will be alright” kinda dad who can grasp that bumps and bruises are learning tools. I was not expecting the kind of emotional turmoil that I went through that day. I don’t know if it was the first time that my son was out of our protective care or what it was, but it was hard. It was hard holding my son down for strangers to do things to him that hurt.
When he began to wake up, he laid on Mom a good long while and seemed content. Later, they needed to check on him and begin to remove connected wires and such, so he was handed to Dad (thanks, a lot!). Eli looked up at me and said, “Daddy, I want to go home. Take me home, please.”
“I will in just a minute baby, but you have to let these people make you feel better.”
When they started to work on him and I had to hold him down, the look in his eyes was something I had never seen before.
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