{"id":13597,"date":"2013-04-11T00:01:10","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T07:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=13597"},"modified":"2013-04-11T00:01:10","modified_gmt":"2013-04-11T07:01:10","slug":"man-bashing-and-the-bashed-lip-at-our-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/man-bashing-and-the-bashed-lip-at-our-house\/","title":{"rendered":"A Dad, a Mom and an 8-Year-Old With a Bashed Lip"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Eight-year-old<\/a>
The Walrus Boy got his picture taken a week or so after being bashed in the lip by a hard ball that was hit off a T. BF Newhall photo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here\u2019s a story about my husband, my son and an errant baseball. I wrote it when Peter was eight — and I was a mom who worried a lot.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall, The Oakland Tribune, May 14, 1989<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s all their fault. They don\u2019t do their share of the housework. They edge us out of the good jobs. They don\u2019t talk about their feelings, and when we talk about ours they don\u2019t listen. They are insensitive. They are selfish. <\/p>\n

\"eight-year-old<\/a>
The Walrus Boy five months after his upper left lip was bashed. I could see the bump; it bothered me. Photo by BF Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Why, we wonder, why can\u2019t a man be more like a woman?<\/p>\n

You can talk to a woman. A woman is sympathetic, sensitive. A woman understands about child care. She understands about job discrimination. She understands about men.<\/p>\n

She likes to talk.<\/p>\n

It has been decades since American women got the vote, the birth control pill, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Roe v. Wade.<\/p>\n

Yet we are still not entirely liberated . . . At least I\u2019m not. When things don\u2019t go right, I whine. I complain. I blame.<\/p>\n

Instead, I should just do.<\/p>\n

Case in point: The Lip.<\/p>\n

At 7 p.m. last Saturday, Peter came home from the park with a lip the size of a ping-pong ball. He had been hit by a hardball on the fly. Inside was a gash an inch long and a quarter inch wide. \u201cI\u2019m taking you to the hospital,\u201d I announced.<\/p>\n

I have a policy on gashes. Get them looked at. Get them stitched. Then be done with it. That way, there will be no unnecessary scars on the faces of my children.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d said Jon. \u201cIt\u2019s just a fat lip. It will be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

I called the pediatrician.<\/p>\n

The doctor was a man. He agreed with Jon. \u201cIt will be fine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Given my policy on gashes and scars, I should have pressed the doctor to see Peter. But it was Saturday night. The baby sitter had arrived. Jon was ready for a nice dinner on the town. If I cancelled dinner to take Peter to the hospital, Jon would be angry.<\/p>\n

Very angry.<\/p>\n

\"Eleven-year-old<\/a>
Thanksgiving three years after Peter’s lip encountered that baseball: I could still see the bump. It still bothered me. Photo by BF Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next day, Peter\u2019s lip was keeling violently to the left. On one side, Peter was his own dear self. On the other, he looked like a walrus.<\/p>\n

I was horrified, Peter would go through life deformed and vilified. Eyes would avert and conversations would stop at the Walrus Boy\u2019s approach.<\/p>\n

And it was all Jon\u2019s fault. Jon had talked me out of taking Peter to the hospital.<\/p>\n

That night at bedtime, I pounded my pillow in rage. I couldn\u2019t sleep. I made pilgrimages to the Walrus Boy\u2019s bed. No doubt about it. He was deformed.<\/p>\n

Monday morning, I was still pounding my pillow. Peter still looked like a walrus. But my thinking was clearer. It was not all Jon\u2019s fault. I had let<\/em> my husband talk me out of doing what I thought was right.<\/p>\n

I called for an appointment with a plastic surgeon. No sooner was the phone back in its cradle than my anger was gone.<\/p>\n

I stopped pounding on things.<\/p>\n

Later, the specialist took a careful look at The Lip. Jon was right. The pediatrician was right. Peter did not need stitches. It would heal without help.<\/p>\n

It was just a fat lip.<\/p>\n

Any self-respecting American male who had played his share of sandlot baseball could have told me that.<\/p>\n

\"Peter<\/a>
Peter graduates from high school: If the bump was still there I wasn’t noticing it any more. Photo by Jon Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now, if course, I felt foolish. But it was a better feeling than anger. I had done what I had to do. And it was nobody\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n

Note: Twenty-four years later Peter says <\/em> he can still feel that bump on his lip, but n<\/em>obody seems to notice it. If I do see the bump these days, it doesn’t much bother me; it’s all part of Peter.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more about Jon at “Would My Husband Like to Add My Name to His?”<\/a> Read more about Peter at “How Selective Service Made a Man of My Son.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Excerpted from a column that appeared in the Oakland Tribune. Reprinted by permission.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"eight-year-old<\/a><\/p>\n

At 7 on a Saturday night, eight-year-old Peter came home from the park with a lip the size of a ping-pong ball. He had been hit by a hardball on the fly. I wanted to take him to the ER. Jon said no, it was just a fat lip. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[953,34,954,356,29,955,956,55,82,56],"class_list":["post-13597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-changing-family","tag-baseball-accidents","tag-dont-miss","tag-fat-lip","tag-feminist-parenting","tag-jon","tag-liberated-women","tag-man-bashing","tag-family-stories","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-peter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}