Of Falling and Freedom

Rrrrrrinnnnngggg, rrrriiiiinnnggg (that's my phone at home, isn't it cute?)

Hello?
Hi, is Grace there?
G, phone for you!
Oh hi M, uh, yeah, let me ask my Mom. Mom, can I go to a Splash Party tonight with M at her swim club? It's from 7-10 pm.

Uh, sure, yeah you can. I can pack your bag and all.
What I thought: M's mom is pretty savvy, had G for playdates, I can give her the cheat sheet for Grace for swimming, all should be ok with this...


Oh and she said it's a drop off splash party. M's mom is dropping her off and then picking her up about 9:30 PM.
Can I talk with her Mom?
Hey there J, yeah, tell me about it... (lots of adult supervision by the swim club, half her school belongs to this local club, there is a DJ, food, games and prizes, the Mom used to go to them when she was a little girl)
What I thought: GULP. Grace all alone to care for herself and her D? But surrounded by her friends who know her. Adults who don't know D at all. She will be devastated if she can't go and the only reason I give is that she can't because she has diabetes. That would suck. I can't tell her that. Cause thats just not true. But can I really let her go to this???


And before I give it one more second to suck the joy from the moment, I answer:
Absolutely, she can go.
Where the hell did that answer come from so fast I think. Then, you know what, I surrender to it. Of course she can go. I would have let my other kids go. She's responsible. She's ready.

Grace jumps. For joy that is. And hugs my legs.

We start to plan. Decrease your basal for swimming by how much Grace?
-30% Mom, for an hour at a time
What are you going to do if you feel the slightest bit low?
Get out of the pool. Tell a friend and an adult. Test and drink one juice if I am 50 or above, and drink two juices if I am below 50. Wait 15 minutes and recheck.
What if your Pod falls off?
Call you on my cell phone and you will come down and help me change it. Disconnect that Pod and wait for you.
You are right, I am only 10 minutes away, I will come and help you.
And Grace, you have to call me every hour, with your number, ok? It means you will call me at 8 pm and 9 pm. OK?
Ok, I can do that. Can we make it 8-8:15 and 9-9:15?
Ok, I'm willing to do that.

8 PM phone call
Hi Mom! I'm 88. I forgot to decrease my basal when I started swimming, so I just did that now.
Ok hon, why don't you have a juice too, before you jump back in the pool?
Ok. I went off the diving board!
Cool, what else you doing?
Hanging out with my friends, half of the school is here. I swam in the deep end. They are playing a game right now and kids are out of the pool, but I didn't feel like playing the game.
Ok hon, have fun.
Bye Mom, talk to you at 9!

9:10 PM phone call
Hi, is this Grace's mom? Yeah, Grace fell at the pool just now. She's pretty scraped up, but doing ok. She's really crying though and would like you to come and pick her up. We've cleaned the scrapes the best we could, but she wants to come home.
Hubby races in the car to the pool, about 8 minutes away.

Grace pulls up at home, sobbing. Out hobbles a little girl who looks like she was running the bases and slid into home - on her toe, right knee, right side of her tummy and right elbow. 'Tore up' isn't even the words to describe it. You know when concrete/cement walkways around a pool meet skin? Yeah, that.

We sit her on the kitchen counter and amidst the sobs, hear her story of how she started to run and then remembered she wasn't supposed to run around the pool and went to slow down, only to trip and fall on the cement. The lifeguards quickly helped her. The concession stand woman helped her. Her friends surrounded her and helped her.

And my little girl says 'It was all going so well until this happened.'

And I start to ramble about 'you should see how many times Mom and Dad have fallen around pools and on cement and it could happen to anyone, everyone has scars on their legs of times they have fallen, it could have happened anywhere and aren't you lucky it happened at close to 9 PM and not close to 7 PM when you first arrived' and she starts to calm down, among the cleaning and the Neosporin-ing of her 5 scrapes.

And then, as the night closes in and when we are sitting on her bed together, re-hashing it all, sitting in the cool air conditioning, in a Mommy-fashioned nightshirt and underwear that lets all the scrapes breath and be free, she leans close to me and says..

'Thanks for letting me go tonight Mom. It was great freedom.'