Other People

Tonight as Kenny was reading The Swiss Family Robinson to us, the phone rang.  I noticed the number was not familiar, but it looked as though it may be from Joey's camp in Kansas City.  I answered, and the young woman on the other end asked if I was Joey's mom.  Then she told me he had tripped (running in a game, I found out later), and fallen face-first into a music stand.  He was fine, she said, but cut on the cheek and near the eye.  The counselor wanted to take him in for stitches, just to keep a bad scar from happening.  They needed our permission to take him in.
The last time I got off the phone that fast was years ago when the vet called at 6:00 in the morning to let us know Danny's Guinea pig had not made it through the night.  I hung up with the vet then, and cried.
And tonight, when I said thank you to the young woman, I hung up quickly and cried again.  Right in the middle of the Swiss Family Robinson.  Why, you ask?  Because other people were taking my son to the emergency room.  In another state. He was going to be seen by a strange doctor in a strange hospital. Without me, his Mom.
It hit me how much I miss him, how the speed of his flapping wings has picked up, how from here on out, I am going to have to keep giving him over to other people.
I know he's fine with it, but to this Mother Hen, it stinks.
I think I'll go buy a plane ticket to Kansas City.