Sometimes, I am the calm one.

“What is that smell? Why is your eye ALL RED?!” I overheard my husband inquire in crescendo from near our son’s bedroom across the house.

Deep sigh. Here’s what happened in my brain next: He found something in his sister’s room, sprayed it in his eye, so we need to flush his eye out.

“BABE, CAN YOU COME HERE? I NEED HELP WITH HIS EYE!” Panic currented under my husband’s voice.

I got off the couch and left behind my new professional text and walked up to my son’s bathroom. On my way, I smelled the OVERWHELMING scent of one of my daughter’s cheap body sprays. Bleck. Once in the bathroom, I found my son standing on the counter facing my husband who was holding either side of my son’s eye open and peering deeply into it. 

“Let me see,” I said gently, and I put my hand on my husband’s back and guided him to the side so I could step in front of my sweet toddler and assess his eye. It was red and tearing.

After a few seconds of looking at him and asking him questions (Does your eye hurt? If I put my hand over this eye, can you still see me out of this eye? What did you spray in your eye?), I noticed my husband was no longer in the bathroom. I scooped up my son, and walked out of the bathroom to find my husband frantically reading the label of a body spray bottle found nearby.

“What does it say?” I asked, evenly. 

“That it’s FLAMMABLE!” he replied.

“Well. His eye isn’t going to catch on fire. Does it say anything else?”

“NO! It says NOTHING else! How can they not…..” rant ensues.

I took my boy back into the bathroom, my husband following me, still ranting about the ineptitudes of body spray manufacturers.

“What are we going to DO?!” he asked, panicked.

“We can flush his eye out with water, which is what I think we should do first. Then, maybe we could use some saline solution or eye drops from when I had pink eye last year if it still looks really bad. Then, if it doesn’t improve, we take him to urgent care and have a doctor look at it and tell us what to do.”

The next several minutes were spent suspending a toddler in a very awkward 45-ish degree angle over his bathroom sink and rinsing his eye out with lukewarm water, per Googled instructions. After lots of blinks and tight hugs, his eye started to simmer down. Then, it was bathtime, and we went about our normal routine. His eye still red but less and less as the minutes passed. I think he’s going to be fine.

My husband and I are wildly opposite which oftentimes works in our favor. This was one of those times. When the kids get hurt, I am the even-keeled, rational one, and he is the frantic mess. All other moments of life including sickness, unforeseen events, and anxiety riddled thoughts about events that haven’t even happened yet, the exact opposite is true; his nonchalant nature is needed to settle my storm. But, sometimes, I am the calm one.