Owwies always get better. At least that’s what I tell my guys. At their age it’s a good enough working theory and all they need to know for now.

Boots, the 3-year-old, was skeptical a month of so ago when he encountered the most painful owwie of his short life, scraping off half the skin on the pinky side of his hand in a nasty case of road burn from a treadmill.

Within weeks, though, he waving the hand in stunned amazement. “It did get better!”

Big Guy, 5, was a doubter about a year and a half back when hernia surgery sheered an elephant-trunk-like appendage from his belly and closed a hole in his abdominal muscles. He’d wake up crying in the wee hours for a few days after the operation, begging for his old belly back. “It didn’t hurt,” he’d weep.

Now, though, he takes great pride in his brand-new belly button that looks almost like his brother’s.

And I, too, had trouble believing when I was about Jodie’s age and I blew away a section of my femur in a car accident. I’ll admit to having more than one case of the weepy “why me’s” while I was stuck in a hospital for three weeks as my friends enjoyed the summer.

Dad and I have been lucky so far that the guys’ owwies have been minor and short-lived. Except for the surgery, which we at least had ample time to plan for, to arrange work schedules, to see that there was help with Boots as Big Guy recovered.

I can’t even imagine how to begin dealing with what The Big Top’s gone through of late, ever since a happy weekend at a dance competition, complete with Mom-appropriate juice boxes, went bad. Way bad.

I suspect my reaction would be a bit like Laura’s, which is to run myself into a frazzle commuting 80 miles to visit my kid in the hospital while still half to three-quarters sick myself. Moms are like that, aren’t they?

Which, of course, doesn’t help anyone much in the long-run. But we never can see that when we’re in the throes of it.

Here’s wishing Jodie the best during what has to be a frustrating hospital stay – in isolation, no less. And here’s wishing the rest of The Big Top the best during a juggle that’s recently become 10 times more complicated.

And here’s wishing Laura the wise counsel I saw on Twitter just minutes ago:

“I’m thinking when the doc said I need to rest for the next two weeks he meant something different than what I can do. Thinking his idea better.”

Yes, it is. Hint, hint!

Debra Legg is a blogger and free-lance writer in California’s Central Valley. You can read more about her adventures in boyland at debralegg.com.