Little hurts

"Momma. You're' hurting me!" my son sobbed, tears flowing down his face like water from a faucet. My heart wrenched, but I steeled myself for the job of removing the deeply imbedded splinter from his finger.

When it became obvious I would need more than a pair of tweezers, I went upstairs for a needle from my sewing kit. "Owie, owie, owie," my son screamed from the living room. "Momma. Come down here. You have to get it out. You have to get it out," he cried hysterically.

Now, both determined, we settled into the big chair and turned on the nearby lamp. I calmly showed him the needle. I told him it would hurt, but then the hurting would stop. We practiced breathing deeply. I poked his finger with the needle, then pushed the splinter out a bit and grabbed it with my tweezers. It slipped out. The ordeal was over, but my son was still crying. He had wrinkled the Spiderman band-aid he grasped in his other hand. I smoothed it out and put it around his finger.

We studied the offending splinter of wood. Then we went to the kitchen for some grape juice. "I want you to have some, too," my son said. An hour later, he paused from his play. "I don't love you when you hurt me like that."