A choking son; My brother’s keeper

I knew it was only a matter of time until one of our sons had a real choking scare. And it finally happened yesterday, when one of our boys put a quarter into his mouth, playfully, but then couldn’t breathe.

It was while I was cooking breakfast. The boys and I were in the kitchen and I was turning some hash browns over in a cast iron pan. And my back was turned to them for maybe 10 or 15 seconds. When I turned to check back, he was doing the sort of quiet, gasping head bob when you’re trying to dislodge something in the throat.

I struck his upper back sharply once. Then twice. And the quarter - and I’ll remember it forever, it was one of those state quarters for Idaho - popped out. And just like that, in another few seconds, it was over. My son and I melted into each other, him in shock, me trying to be stoic and calm, even though I was coming back from a feeling of free-fall inside.

It was the shortest worst moment of my life. I was about the same age when I choked on a hard candy lifesaver and I remember it vividly, still. He and I will both remember this, forever, I think. I woke up from sleep last night and couldn’t stop replaying it in my head for 30 minutes straight, until I tried reimagining us taking that quarter between both our palms, while on our knees intertwined in the kitchen, using magical energy to make it disappear away.

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The scariest part of choking is that it literally makes someone helpless. As in, the act of choking makes it impossible to shout for help, and therefore makes one help-less. To even notice someone is choking you have to be very close to them, any more than a few yards away, literally or figuratively, and you can’t see or hear their signals.

I knew this day would come, someday. So when I’m on duty with the kids, I don’t like being away from them for any measurable period of time. Even if I’m immersed in something, like cooking breakfast, I always have one eye and one ear in their direction. Because I knew this day would come, and knowing it would has haunted me since our first son was born.

The scariest part of someone choking is that it makes them helpless. To notice someone is choking you have to be around to notice them. That’s all I’ve been thinking about for the past day straight.

And it has led me to reflect more broadly. Who am I choosing to notice? It is just my wife and kids? Is it my family and close friends? What about my neighbors? What if I, literally or figuratively, saw someone choking and help-less at a park or while out shopping? Would I notice them? Who am I noticing? Who am I choosing not to notice?

This whole experience of choking - both living through my son’s scare and reliving my own - has got me thinking about my relationship with the world outside myself. And I think this idea of noticing rhymes with the spirt of the phrase “I am my brother’s keeper.” Who we choose to notice is our brother or sister, someone we don’t cannot be. Who we choose to notice matters. Who I am choosing to notice and not notice matters.

There’s a chasm between who I ought to  notice, who I choose to notice, and who I actually notice. It’s humbling and intimidating to think how big that chasm might be.

This chasm, it seems, is one way to represent the challenge of trying to be a good person, day to day, in the trenches of real life. Who am I choosing to notice and not notice is an indicting, messy, moral question. But it’s one, I think, worth walking toward, with intention into the unknown, instead of running away from.