A Critique of Brevity, from the Hospital
My son ate a toxic berry—parenting, worry, and the weight of getting it right. Loneliness, the pains we can’t prevent, and small moments that reshape how we see care, responsibility, and resilience.
A couple of weeks ago, on a Saturday, Lorenzo ate a small berry from a toxic plant (Solanum elaeagnifolium, also known as silverleaf nightshade), and we spent the weekend at the children's hospital in Athens. They pumped his stomach, and he stayed under observation for two nights since symptoms could appear up to 48 hours later.
On Monday, we went back home. “Who hasn't done stuff like that as a kid?” some friends commented. What can you do, I thought, and focused on the fact that everything turned out fine and that my six-year-old son is in good health.
This would be a brief, factual report — flat, succinct, and devoid of emotion. Without the thoughts, lessons, and anecdotes from the three days I spent in the hospital without showering or brushing my teeth.
Brevity is necessary in certain moments — for yes-or-no decisions, in emergencies that demand an immediate response. But brevity is also the enemy of depth; it prevents a simple piece of information from becoming rich and meaningful — elements that can emerge through emotions, context, and details.
"Brevity is the friend of misunderstandings," wrote philosopher Valentín Muro in his newsletter (in Spanish), where he noted that nuances often make paragraphs longer: "You can remove them, but not without losing too much in the process (...) If all knowledge could be reduced to a list of statements, neither science nor philosophy would exist."
That said, I won't be brief — and I'll try to make it worth your while.
The inevitable pain of a child
Saturday was sunny, one of those spring-like days with a blue sky that are common in Greek winters. Irene took León, our two-year-old, and Lorenzo to a park to meet some friends. I went for a bike ride with M., an Argentine friend.
I was about to head home to shower and join them at the park, but I stopped at a corner because M. wanted to check something out. A minute later, my phone rang. Seeing it was Irene, I speculated about what might have happened — her calling meant urgency — but I would have never guessed what was coming.
The last time it had been Lorenzo’s arm fracture in September, an ordeal that only recently ended with his final check-up two weeks before the sunny Saturday. They had told him he could play soccer again.
The intensity of the present moment of parenting came through in Irene’s voice: “Lorenzo accidentally ate a small yellow berry from those plants that are everywhere. It’s toxic. The pediatrician says we should go to the ER.”
I arrived at the hospital while Irene was finishing the paperwork for Lorenzo, who by then was already struggling to speak and feeling unwell.
I saw the stress in everyone’s eyes, sensed it in their breathing. I wished I had been there earlier. Then I told my guilt, “No, you can’t always be everywhere at once.”
In hindsight, the medical procedure was quick. In the moment, it was neither light nor fleeting.
“How many more times are they going to do this?!” Lorenzo screamed, desperate, as a nasogastric tube went up his nose and down into his stomach. Through that little tube, with a large syringe, the nurse pushed a liquid into his stomach — probably saline solution — and then took it out.
“Until the liquid comes out clean,” the nurse replied, repeating the procedure several times while Lorenzo cried, screamed, and protested in Greek (Σταμάτα!), Spanish (¡no puedo respirar!), and Italian ("Mi fa maleeee!").
When he screamed a deep "Ahhhhhhhhhh!", I saw the depths of his throat. I hugged him. I made dumb comments. I asked if he wanted a four-flavor ice cream when we left. He smiled, breathed, and screamed again. I also saw Irene turn away to hide her tears from him.
Medically, it was a textbook case with a good prognosis. Still, it was gut-wrenching to see Lorenzo's vocal cords, his desperation, his tear-streaked face. Facing fears and helplessness, accepting that we can't shield our children from certain pains.
Nuclear loneliness
After the traumatic stomach pumping, still stressed and scared, Lorenzo screamed again several times: they drew blood from his left arm, poked him in three different spots before finding a vein in his right wrist, and hooked him up to an IV for three days.
Once again, I felt the loneliness of parenting. Not in a personal sense, but as a realization of how nuclear families operate — like tiny, self-contained units in a hyper-busy and fast-paced world.
The two Greek families sharing our hospital room had no more company than we did. In three days, only their partners stopped by briefly. Irene stayed home: León had a runny nose and a bad cough. Does anyone need two sick kids at once?
So much loneliness
On Sunday, they were going to discharge Lorenzo. He was fine. But at 5 p.m., they said it would be best to stay until Monday: “Symptoms appear in the first 24 hours, but there could also be neurological effects or dizziness within 48.”
I could have signed a paper to take him home under my responsibility. But we stayed.
Maybe it was extreme caution, a state I easily slip into when haunted by the fear that something preventable might happen to my child. In this case, it was the pull of wanting to be home, drinking wine, and sleeping in my bed versus spending another day unshowered, surviving on cookies and hospital leftovers.
Before trying to sleep on the hospital armchair, I realized that on Monday morning I would not be able to attend a work meeting to discuss two presentations we are preparing with a friend for an academic conference on masculinities in Elche, Spain.
This is no different from mothers (and maybe some fathers?) who couldn’t work Monday morning because they had a sick child at home. There’s so much loneliness and lack of support. And that makes it really hard.
It’s enough
Observing other families in the hospital, I developed a theory: those of us who care for our children worry too much about them. There’s an over-preoccupation. The flood of parenting information, social pressure to be "good parents," and the fear of irreversible mistakes all play a role.
Sometimes it feels like every decision is make-or-break — always in the negative sense. As if yelling once, refusing to play, or saying "no" (to ice cream, to the tablet...) could permanently damage them.
In addition to Lorenzo, there were two other children in the room. The parents were very loving. Seeing a picture of those families or being with them in a playground would have given me the happy snippet that is so usual now on social media: laughter, hugs, calm children, happy parents. And feeling that we are doing something wrong with our children, because it seems so much harder for us than for the others.
But I spent three full days in the same room as these families. I saw a mother lose her patience more than once — for example when her son would crawl on the floor and under the bed, risking the IV getting caught and the needle in his vein hurting him.
I also saw a father holding an IV above his head while chasing his three-year-old daughter before the tube yanked the needle from her arm. The toddler did not think that the IV tubing would stretch until the needle was pulled out of her skin. The father did and immediately became Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner through the corridors of the children's hospital.
I saw things only someone with a child like this would understand. A kid doing exactly what Lorenzo does, driving us to the limits of our patience. Maybe because he is bored or uncomfortable, he becomes agitated and moves non-stop: “You tripped sitting down, Lorenzo, how can that be?”, I tell him when I don't understand how he falls off a chair.
The boy in the bed opposite ours was shaking his legs, fidgeting uncontrollably, in an almost convulsive state, until he found and tirelessly insisted on hitting a point that made an unbearable noise — hitting the iron bed rail with his feet. The mother shouted at him and shook him. The child cried.
Even for me, who suffers the same thing with Lorenzo, from the outside it seemed like the boy was simply expressing his understandable frustration at being stuck in bed. (By the way, at times, it felt strangely good for me — when else am I going to spend three days lying down, doing nothing "productive" like working, tidying the house, or diving into some domestic task?)
I know that mother reached her limit and snapped. I suspect she later felt bad, like any parent would. And I felt relief: it’s not just me, it’s many of us, and it’s the context of parenting today.
I saw other parents lose their patience — struggling, exhausted, and in low spirits after sleeping with a child twisting and turning all night, trying to find a corner in a child-sized bed where an adult body simply doesn’t fit.
That physical exhaustion is also the exhaustion of modern parenting, where it’s hard to understand and accept that just being there is what we can offer. We accompany our children, but they are not our robots — they will find their own path, which includes eating a poisonous berry today, and doing something unimaginably foolish tomorrow.
It’s curious how parents who dedicate themselves so much to their children fear that we might break them forever.
It surprises me to see people who have overcome the suffering of terrible childhoods, yet their own experiences are not enough for them to trust that their children will also be able to overcome our mistakes — mistakes that, by the way, are insignificant compared to the traumatic parenting they endured and survived.
It’s important to value the dedication we give our children — the physical, emotional, and psychological commitment. Being present is a lot.
An observation
While searching for doctors or just stretching my legs, I walked multiple times through the hallways of the first three floors in the area where Lorenzo was hospitalized.
I counted: there was always an adult woman caring for the children. The men I saw were visiting, "accompanying" the woman. I only saw one man staying alone with a child — a guy in my room, who arrived both nights right before bedtime and left in the morning.
Technology
I learned random things. On the hospital’s third floor, there was only one remote control for about 30 TV sets. Each time you used it, you had to return it. The remote control lost its purpose.
Someone mentioned that you could download an app to turn your phone into a remote and control the TV that way. It’s 2025 — there’s an app for everything. How had I not thought of that before?
ChatGPT would have solved the problem if I had asked, but then I wouldn’t have interacted with other people. Life gives, technology takes away, right?
Technology also gives, let's not exaggerate, I am writing this newsletter in the hospital, on my phone, which was a lifesaver throughout this weekend.
Stunning goal
On Sunday afternoon, I received a message from M.: “Check out Lamela's first goal; it was amazing.” The day before, while biking, I had told M. that I had run into the former River Plate player (who also played for Roma, Tottenham, and Sevilla) at Lorenzo's training, since our kids go to the same academy.
Lamela scored a brilliant goal and another good one in AEK’s 2-1 win against PAOK. Lorenzo doesn’t know who Lamela is, and I don’t plan on telling him unless necessary.
What would be the point of Lorenzo knowing that the father of two of his teammates is a professional footballer who played with and against Lionel Messi? Maybe I’m wrong, no doubt about that.
The joy of watching
On Monday morning, I stepped out of the hospital for two minutes to buy a coffee. I left Lorenzo with the mother of the girl in the bed across from us.
There was music playing in the café on the corner, people sitting outside. It was just an ordinary café, nothing fancy. But something about it — the people, the music, the conversations, sharing a table, making eye contact — lifted my mood. It made me feel enthusiasm and joy.
Maybe it has to do with how we regulate our emotions through interaction with others. Just being in a space where people are enjoying themselves, even without speaking to them, can affect us. An energy that reaches us simply by watching others.
Going back home
On Monday at 1 p.m., they told us we could go home. It’s going to be good, I thought, it will take us two hours by public transport. Taking the bus and walking, an adventure. Even more so after Lorenzo had spent three days lying down, taking no more than ten steps. A record in his life since he started walking at ten months. And a record of TV too — he watched more in three days than in six years.
Being on the bus allowed for conversations that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. He told me he never wants to go to a park again — because eating that poisonous berry made him miss his soccer match on Sunday.
“It was the first game of the year,” he said, tears in his eyes, frustrated because after missing four months of training due to his arm fracture, he had finally returned to practice three weeks ago and was ready to play again. Patience is something that can be practiced and absorbed, I hope.
Being in the hospital meant we weren’t home with Irene and León. Another way to look at it is that Lorenzo and I spent three days alone together, which also gave Irene and León time to be together without us.
It’s all about interpretation and perspective. And none of this would be possible with brevity.
…
This is us for now. Thank you very much to those who keep sharing this newsletter, subscribing and writing to me (you can always do it by answering this mail, I answer everything!).
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With love,
Nacho
🙏 Many thanks to Worldcrunch for translating and editing this newsletter.
