Pasta Party Not So Humorous when kid breaks an arm

I should have known better. It was all going so well.

Last night we hosted a traditional “pasta party”  for the entire high school girls’ swim team. That’s 30+ miserable aqua-girls at my house in all their hormonal, irrational beauty. I avoided these time-honored commitments throughout the four years of #1’s athletic tenure, but was sucked in for these swimmers.

Here’s how a high school pre-game pasta party should work:

Every Sunday during swim season (ditto for football, soccer, cross country and field hockey) one sucker family invites the ENTIRE team (freshman, JV & varsity) to their home to feed the moody entourage pasta, bread, salad, and dessert. I think the idea is carb-up for the big competition and create camaraderie. Reserve families pitch in to help, but one poor sap needs to have these self-centered creatures to their home and hope for the best.

We got it. The best, I mean.

I happen to love these girls. They’re smart, driven, silly, beautiful, and wickedly funny.

The dinner went oh so well. They ate, humored us with forced participation of “That’s Amore,” and laughed at our sarcastic cheer emblazened on the cake. They hung out and talked. Did physics. Spun wildly on swings and ran crooked across the lawn. Great reminders that inside difficult teenagers are still the same adorable little girls struggling to find their way.

The evening was perfect, right up until the part where hubby and I peeled out of the driveway, over a lawn chair in a race to the ER, leaving silent teenage girls (oxymoron??), staring dumbfounded in the rear view mirror.

Let’s just say it involved a zip-line and our kid #4, who attempted a triple cow-tow or something of the sort, upside down no less, in a desperate attempt to gain attention from the older girls so oblivious to his elementary school existence.

A bad landing, a broken humerus, late night surgery, two pins and lots of morphine later, here I sit. In the hospital. Writing to teachers, coaches, friends, family explaining the frantic Facebook updates.

No biggie. Just another day at the office, the home office, where 30 high school girls, a couple little brothers, a Bernese Mountain Dog, a big ol’ pot o’ pasta, and a snapped humerus immediately redirected the joy of the afternoon into mama response mode.

Not so funny right now. It’ll be funny later, but right now I have sad little boy, with a broken arm and broken heart.