12/28/1991 – 12/28/1992
Down But Not Out
This year was with illness, but not without humor. Kids are walking vectors of disease; ours were no exception. Sweet Allie, Mommy’s little helper at three years old, licked spoons clean then carefully placed them back in the silverware tray, until I saw what she was doing. In the meantime, we shared whatever viruses the girls brought home from school or day care.
One particular night, I recall falling into bed about ten, exhausted from the day and asleep within minutes. Sleep was never a problem for me, since I learned during nursing not to waste precious sleep time before the next feeding. Around midnight, baby Samantha woke crying and I vaulted out of bed in time to find her projectile vomiting over her crib and the floor. I cleaned Sammy while Dale changed the bedding and started the wash. After I rocked her back to sleep, I climbed into bed around one a.m. Again, asleep within minutes.
An hour later, I had this strange awareness from somewhere deep within my dreams that someone was watching me. I opened one eye to find Allie standing next to me with a sick look on her face.
“Oh, God, no, not on the new wood floor,” I screeched.
I did the only sane thing a crazy person would do in the middle of REM sleep, unable to find a bucket or a trash can. I put out my hands, in time to catch chunks of vomitus, hot, Level 4 viral liquid that spewed from Allie’s mouth. Dale leaped out of bed again and ran to my side. Like the cartoon where the guy hits the banana peel and flips upside down, Dale hit the slop, his feet launched in the air, and he landed on his back in the mess. I rushed poor, sick Allie into the bathroom, and returned to find Dale moaning on the floor.
“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
Obvious, but I had to ask. Once I knew he was fine, I started laughing. I know. I know. What kind of wife and mother would do such a thing? I am not heartless, really I am not, but I have a twisted, slapstick sense of humor, and for that moment, we were living it. It was tragic but absolutely, hysterically funny. It took another hour of caring for Allie and Dale and the floor, before I got back into bed.
At three a.m., it was Meghan’s turn with this intestinal illness. We bathed her, cleaned her sheets, finally back in bed by four a.m., both parents now queasy. Whether a lack of sleep or the intestinal flu, we knew we needed substitutes for school in two hours. We were not going to release Nana Eva that morning, as we needed a nurse ourselves.
A few months later, a decade before the chicken pox vaccine, Meghan came down with a raging case of the chicken pox that mirrored her metabolism. She was miserable, covered head to toe with itchy welts, but as quickly as the chicken pox developed, it disappeared within days. Two weeks later, Allie’s version of chicken pox appeared, but her case was quite different, with few new poxes cropping up every day for a month. We calculated from the exposure and incubation time that Sammy’s case would likely appear in two weeks. Sure enough, with exquisite timing, Sam’s poxes emerged as I arrived in Mississippi with Meghan for the International Science Fair, leaving Dale to deal with the situation at home. By then, he was masterful at lathering on Calamine lotion and in consoling sick babies.
Love is Complicated 