Luminous Laughter

The Burner

No, I’m not talking about Michael Phelps incinerating seven world records at the Olympics. And I’m not talking about Fahrenheit 451. And I’m not talking about the thing in a jet engine that ignites the fuel mixture. (That’s called a combustor, anyway, so I couldn’t possibly be talking about that.)

I’m talking about the kind that we have in our kitchen. It makes up part of our stove. It cooks food. Apparently, it cooks little boys, too.

On Monday during lunch, Caleb pushed a chair over to the stove and reached for something that was sitting on a hot burner. His arm almost immediately informed him in certain, unequivocal terms that doing so was a really bad idea. He came out of the scalding with three huge blisters on his palm, a second-degree burn on his wrist, and some smaller blisters on his fingers.

He spent most of the day with his hand in a big bowl of water. Kim held him while he slept so that he could keep his hand cool. We took him to the doctor’s office when I got home from work, and they lanced the blisters on his hand (since they were so large it was obvious that they were going to pop, soon, anyway).

We have to wash Caleb’s hand and change the dressing on it every day. Caleb’s not too fond of the process. But though there have been a fair number of tears involved in the hurting and healing process to this point — and Caleb’s cried a bit, too — the whole experience has reinforced to me exactly how sweet and apparently indestructible Caleb is.

He sometimes fusses a bit when we change his dressing. The fuss goes like this: “Waaaaa — ducky! Kitty!” You just can’t keep a happy child down. Even on the day he burned his appendage, he was perfectly content, curious, and… curious, as long as his hand wasn’t outside the water for too long.