Your Body Is Helping You

“OUCHOUCHOUCHOUCH OUCH!” Mia screams as she runs in the door. The scream is so forceful I’m impressed she can form syllables around it. I wish I had ear plugs.  

“What’s wrong, my love?” Jules says from the kitchen. She’s holding Mia’s infant brother Simon and trying to encourage the middle child, Luca, to pull his pants up. The kids are supposed to be at a play date in an hour, and the ruckus around getting ready has already begun.

Mia hops frantically on one foot to get from the door to the living room couch, and she plops down with her lifted leg stuck straight out in front of her. She’s still screaming “OUCH OUch Ouch ouch ouch,” then a breath, “OUCH OUch Ouch ouch ouch!”

Jules puts the puzzle pieces together quickly. “Did you get stung by a bee in the garden?”

Mia nods fervently, not breaking her refrain.

“Was it hiding in the grass?” Jules asked, pulling up Luca’s pants so he wouldn’t trip on his way to investigate Mia’s foot.

“YES,” Mia yells accusingly. My friend is a mind reader, I think. “I was just looking at the flowers and it stung me!” Mia continues breathlessly. “I wasn’t doing anything!” She starts to sob, her bright red face a stark contrast to her white candy floss hair.

This is the point when my brain clicks and I finally understand what’s going on. I am eight steps behind everyone else. How am I so far behind when I have so much less to care for? I start opening kitchen cabinets. “Do you have baking soda?” I ask Jules. “Baking soda and water might neutralize the sting.” I’m hoping chemistry can fix the feelings.

Jules doesn’t answer. Luca has run over to poke Mia’s toe, and Jules tries to run interference with the baby in her arms. She shoos Luca into her bedroom. Mia is scream-crying.

I give up on my search for baking soda and I sit on the couch next to her.

 “Make it stop make it stop make it stop!” she yells at me.

“I wish I could, honey,” I say. “I know it hurts.” My brain is scrambling for something to soothe her, but I can’t just reach inside her and take the pain out. I’ve got nothing.

Jules comes back into the living room with a little bowl of baking soda paste. She’s left the baby on the bed and told Luca to find his socks on his own, which she tells me is easily a ten-minute project. She shoves a pillow under Mia’s knee so she doesn’t have to hold her leg up, and she kneels in front of Mia’s foot, dabbing baking soda paste on her toe.

“Does that feel better, my love?” Jules asks, and Mia nods silently. Then Mia yelps and waves her hand. “Does it hurt? Do you want me to wipe it off?”

“No, your finger,” Mia says.

“Oh, was I pressing too hard?”

Mia nods.

“Okay, I’ll stop touching it,” Jules says. She sits back and watches Mia’s face. Mia peers at her toe. I’m astonished by what Jules understands when her children have barely said anything. Then the baby cries from the bed, and Jules gets up again to scoop him up from the bed.

“It’s so red!” Mia points at her toe in desperation. “It’s spreading up my foot!”

“Yes,” I say slowly. “That’s your body working to protect you against the sting.”

“It’s swelling!” Mia shrieks. “It hurts to move.”

“It does that on purpose,” I say. Mia turns to look me in the eye. For the first time since she came in the door I have her full attention, and it surprises me. “Your foot swells on purpose to keep you from moving too much. The bee put a little poison in you, and your body is making sure it doesn’t get too far.” I watch her face to see if she’s freaked out by the word “poison,” but she looks from me back to her foot, calmer now.

“It’s red because your body is sending more blood to your toe to help it heal,” I say.

“I don’t want to move,” Mia says.

“Yeah, that sounds good,” I say. “Let’s just rest right here.”

“But it hurts so much.” It comes out as a softer plea.

“I know,” I say. “Hey, remember what you taught me this morning?” I hold up my hand with my fingers spread open.

Mia looks at my hand and shakes her head, not quite getting it.

“Remember finger breathing?” I ask. Earlier that day, Jules had told Mia to tell me what she’d learned on some yoga videos she’d been watching, and Mia showed me how the teacher had taught them to take slow breaths by outlining their outstretched hand with the index finger of the other hand. Each time the finger traced up one of their fingers, they took an inhale. Each time they traced down a finger, they exhaled. This is genius, I thought, and filed the trick away to teach my nephews later.

I trace my finger around my hand, breathing slowly, and Mia holds her hand up and copies me. The fancy breathing trick is as much for me as it is for Mia; I feel how rattled I am, as if I’m the one whose body shot her up with adrenaline against the sting.

At first Mia takes staggering breaths, but by the third breath they started to smooth out. I breathe out with her through pursed lips, and a small voice in my head whispers, your capacity grows when you need it to.

“That’s really good,” I say. “Your toe is probably going to keep hurting for a little bit. But you can help it out by breathing.”

Mia makes it through one more hand of breaths, and then the pain is overwhelming again.

“Would it help if I read a book so you can focus on that?”

Mia nods, and I go over to the bookshelf. I pick out a book I haven’t seen before. “How’s this one?” I ask.

“That’s a great, great book,” she says excitedly. Luca plops on the couch on my other side. I read the book while Jules dresses the baby, packs a bag for the play date, and pushes shoes onto Luca’s feet. By the time the story is over, Mia is ready to play with her friends.