One thing was sure: I’d never before found Thanksgiving lunch to be so completely unappealing.
We did our best to clean up the mess—at least the best you can do without a fire hose full of bleach—and took our sick little girl home. Where she proceeded to throw up every thirty minutes for the next six hours. The worst part was that a toddler doesn’t really understand the concept of running to the toilet every time she feels the need to yak. Not to mention she was completely traumatized by the entire experience (yes, join your mother as she deals with post-traumatic stress disorder—maybe we can get a two-for-one deal in a therapy program), and she just wanted me to hold her every time she started to throw up.
About the sixth time I had to do a complete wardrobe change after holding her in the vicinity of the bathroom while she threw up, Perry announced we needed a more efficient system or I was going to run out of ratty old shirts.
(Little did he know I could never run out of ratty old shirts because I am a shirt hoarder. I have shirts that precede my college days, and that was, lo, many years ago.)
(Also, only Perry would try to devise a more streamlined throw-up system. Like the real problem was we just weren’t organized enough with our gastrointestinal issues.)
Caroline couldn’t grasp running to the toilet or just lying on the bathroom floor enjoying the feel of the cold tile on her face, which has always been my preferred method of dealing with stomach illness and/or too much fun in the aforementioned college years.
So the next time she looked up at me from the couch I’d covered in beach towels and announced, “I feel my fro-ups coming, Mama,” I picked her up, opened the front door, and held her out over the railing of our front porch. I’m sure the neighbors were delighted with this display. Nothing like a little post-Thanksgiving exhibition of complete foulness by a two-year-old wearing nothing but a diaper, and her mother, who’s wearing a 1991 Diamond Darling Christmas Formal shirt that says, “Deck the Halls with Bats and Balls!” The sweet, naive college girl who wore a velvet dress with hot-pink sleeves bigger than her head to that Christmas formal never could have imagined the atrocities that shirt would see fourteen years later.
And so Perry spent the next morning hosing down the bushes in our front yard while I succumbed to the dreaded stomach virus myself and lay on the bathroom floor wishing I could just die and mentally composing my last will and testament.
(I was going to leave my CHI flat iron to Gulley.)
In the true form of a child, Caroline had made a complete recovery. She danced around me as she asked over and over again, in a singsong voice, “What’s happenin’, Mama? What’s happenin’ in your mouth, Mama? You so sick, Mama?”
Yes. Mama is sick. Largely because she spent the last twelve hours covered in throw-up that wasn’t her own.
Mama is going to die now. But you rest in the comfort of knowing it was very important that you chewed on the handles of that tricycle at preschool and contracted heaven-knows-what and brought it home to roost.
I don’t know if this is in any of those books about parenting, but if I had to give you a definition of what motherhood really looks like, I might just say it’s a woman who catches her child’s throw-up. With her bare hands.
Chapter 17
Nitpicking
Since the infamous Thanksgiving flu incident, we’ve experienced a variety of illnesses courtesy of our little rhesus monkey. Most of them have been your typical stomach virus/cold/bronchitis/strep-type thing. And of course Perry and I would both end up with some version of all of these, which led to our very own Symptom Showcase Showdown, in which contestants compete to see who feels the worst.
Then came the morning Caroline climbed into my bed and announced she had a sore in her mouth. And I noticed she also had little blisters on her hands. This earned us a diagnosis of hand, foot, and mouth disease by the pediatrician.
The great irony is that many years before, in my prechild days, I’d attended a business meeting and had to share a room with a girl I’d never met before. (Yes, that is a situation that is thirty-one kinds of awkward anyway.) She was a sales rep in Minnesota or somewhere like that and became really sick the second day of the meeting. When I went back to our hotel room that night, I found her lying on the bed, sweating from fever, and she showed me little blisters on her hands. I think I said something calm and soothing like, “Oh my word, I think you’re going to die.”
But she told me she knew it was hand, foot, and mouth disease because her son had it before she left on the trip. At which point I found my manager in the lobby of the hotel, grabbed him by his collar, and whispered desperately, “Listen to me. You have got to get me my own room. My roommate has some weird disease called hand, foot, and mouth, and I don’t know what that is, but I’m pretty sure you get it from rabid, dirty sheep. I beg you, please get me my own room.”
It was exhibits A, B, and C of God’s sense of humor that now my very own child had come down with this horrible illness that makes people believe you’ve been spending time on unsanitary farms. The reality is, it’s just a normal virus-type thing and fairly common.
On the upside, Caroline slept for about three days straight because she was so tired. However, on the downside, she walked around for the next six months telling anyone who would listen about all the sores she had in her mouth. And then I’d feel the need to overexplain that she no longer had sores in her mouth but she’d had hand, foot, and mouth disease several months ago. Which caused the cashier at the grocery store to look at me like she wished I’d just go back to the place with the dirty sheep from whence I’d come.
But the plague that almost took us down and caused me to search the Internet for inpatient treatment programs was the great lice outbreak of 2011. I’d spent the last weekend of July at the beach with a group of my best girlfriends. It was an early celebration for my upcoming fortieth birthday, and we’d had the best time.
(Well, except for the part where we almost got arrested by the policeman working the line at the ferry because he gave us a ticket we felt was uncalled for, and my friend Julie wasn’t afraid to let him know it.)
(In case you’re wondering, the use of sarcasm rarely, if ever, endears you to police officers.)
I walked through the back door relaxed and refreshed and generally in love with my life, thanks to how special my wonderful friends had made me feel all weekend long. Turning forty was going to be awesome. Caroline walked into the bathroom to watch me unpack my bag, and I noticed as she bent down that she had a rash on the back of her neck. It suddenly dawned on me that I also had a rash on the back of my neck.
So I asked her, “Does that rash on your neck itch?” She replied, “Yes, it itches really bad.” I did what I do in all life situations that involve a potential medical mystery: I consulted Google, just knowing there was at least a 95 percent chance that an itchy rash on the back of your neck is a symptom of cancer. Because Google loves nothing more than a cancer diagnosis. It’s the reason I’ve lost countless nights of sleep worrying about whether or not my yellow tongue was a sign of liver cancer.
(It wasn’t. It was a sign I needed to step away from the Christmas sugar cookies and eat a vegetable every now and then.)
(So I didn’t have liver cancer, but I was on the verge of scurvy.)
As it turned out, an itchy rash on the back of the neck is a symptom of lice. I immediately began to pick through Caroline’s hair and, sure enough, nits. Nits. My head is itching right now just thinking about it.
We both had lice. And I spent the next several days soaking our heads in mayonnaise, olive oil, and lice treatment options from the drugstore. At one point I seriously contemplated just pulling up to a gas station, paying at the pump, and dousing our heads with unleaded premium.
Everything on the Internet said you needed to bag stuffed animals, spray everything you own or have ever looked at with Lysol, and wash all bedding in hot water. I just wanted to sell the house fully furnished and move. Honestly, it seemed easier. Turning
forty was going to be a living nightmare.
But I persevered and combed out nits in Caroline’s hair while Perry combed out nits in my hair. We spent our evenings just like a family of monkeys at the zoo. It was a real treat. Make that thing #4,753 on the list of things you never imagine, as you walk down the aisle in the beautiful white dress looking like a fairy princess, your husband will have to do for you.
It was shortly after I’d declared our household lice free that Caroline threw me under the bus at church one Sunday. I don’t mean she literally threw me under the bus. I want to clarify because our church does offer a shuttle bus from the parking lot, and technically a person could get thrown under the bus at church.
I mean she sold me out.
She had become friends with a little girl in her Sunday school class, and the girls were playing after church while the adults stood around and visited. This little girl’s father, whom I’d never met, walked up and introduced himself to me. About that time, Caroline joined in the conversation, and he asked if she was an only child. She told him she was, and he mentioned that his daughter was an only child too, and sometimes she got bored at home.
While I listened in horror, Caroline said, “Yeah, me too. I get so bored. I ask my mom to play with me, but all she does is sit on the couch. She’s real lazy.”
I’m sorry? I’m real lazy? Last I checked I was ridding your hair of the plague and pestilence you picked up from who-knows-where and spending my evenings looking for microscopic eggs.
I desperately wanted to defend myself to this man I didn’t even know, but I knew anything I said would just make me sound more guilty. So I stood there frozen, torn between wanting to redeem my mothering, throwing my child under the literal shuttle bus, and running to the car and bursting into tears because I suddenly felt like a total failure.
Instead I opted to say in an overly cheerful voice, “Okay! Well, you have a great Sunday!” I proceeded to grab Perry, telling him it was time to go, and I couldn’t even look at Caroline. As soon as we got in the car, I turned to her tearfully and said in a shaky voice, “Is that what you think of me? That I’m lazy and don’t do anything for you?”
She looked at me like a deer caught in the headlights as I went on. “How many moms go on every field trip? How many moms eat lunch at school with their kids almost every week? How many moms help with spelling tests by making the letters with their whole body like they’re doing the ‘YMCA’?”
Meanwhile, Perry wasn’t sure what had just happened. He was staring at me like I’d lost my mind as I sobbed and went into general hysteria. But I think he got the gist because he pulled over the car and told Caroline, “I don’t think it was very nice to say your mom is lazy. I don’t think you realize or appreciate how much she does for you.”
Then Caroline burst into tears and said, “I’m sorry, Mama. I’m sorry. I don’t even really know what lazy means. I just meant that sometimes you get tired from taking care of me and have to take a break.”
Well, that is the truth, sister. That is the truth.
I spent the rest of the day feeling a little shell shocked. All I’ve ever wanted to be was the best mother I could be, and I felt like my daughter had just announced to the world that she didn’t feel like I was doing a great job. Everyone I told this story to assured me I was a wonderful mother, but there are some wounds that just take a while to knit back into wholeness. To be honest, my pride was hurt more than anything.
I think I’d been living under the illusion that I could give Caroline a perfect childhood. But perfect doesn’t exist in our world. I can give her love, I can give her laughter, I can instill values and morals in her, I can teach her about Jesus and how he loves her more than she knows, and I can hopefully give her more good memories than bad.
And I can pick the nits out of her hair, one little larva at a time.
But I can’t give her perfection, because I’m fresh out.
That’s where the grace of God enters, and I exit quietly through the back door, allowing him to fill in the gaps.
Chapter 18
Ready for the World
I remember my first day of kindergarten. Actually, I don’t know that I remember the actual event so much, but I’ve seen pictures of it that help me know things I can’t recall from real memories. I wore a red dress and navy blue Keds, and I rode the school bus. Then at the end of the day I forgot to get off the school bus, and the driver didn’t realize it until a few blocks later. I do kind of remember that part. The panic of knowing I wasn’t supposed to still be on the school bus but not being sure what I was supposed to do about it.
Little did I know it then, but that moment was just the beginning of so many times I’d feel that way—insecure, panicked, and afraid that I’d really screwed everything up. Welcome to the real world. It’s a kick in the pants.
And maybe that’s why I’d been dreading the moment Caroline would start kindergarten ever since the day she was born. I didn’t want to send my baby out of her safe little cocoon and into the big, bad world of kindergarten. I wanted to keep her safe and make her feel secure. And most of all, I wanted to be in control of everything she would ever hear and experience. That whole John Travolta Boy in the Plastic Bubble idea looked very appealing to me. All of a sudden those homeschoolers I’d made fun of began to look a lot smarter. I considered whether or not I could spend my days wearing a denim jumper and making homemade granola while I taught Caroline from home.
(I’m totally kidding, by the way. I know not all homeschoolers wear denim jumpers.)
(Some of them wear denim skirts.)
(Seriously, I have a lot of friends who homeschool. I applaud their patience.)
After three years of sending Caroline to preschool two to three days a week, I thought I would feel more ready to send her off to kindergarten, but it felt so different. Preschool was kind and friendly. A safe little haven where she went to school with the kids of my closest friends in a cozy little church environment where they sang songs about Jesus and made flowerpot nativities every Christmas and had a special chapel celebration in honor of each student’s birthday every year.
I knew the mean streets of public school weren’t going to be nearly so nurturing and kind. We would have to get to know new kids and new families. My baby would be exposed to kids who might make fun of her lunch box or her sparkly tennis shoes, and I might be tempted to tackle someone who didn’t even have permanent teeth yet.
I wanted Caroline to stay in the safe harbor of Christian preschool forever. In fact, the only reason I was even remotely happy about moving on was that it would mark the end of the annual creation of the Fiesta shoe-box float.
But as for everything else, it broke my heart to leave. On Caroline’s last day of preschool I hugged the directors and thanked them for the way they had fiercely loved my child over the last three years, and I cried so hard I think I frightened them a little. I may have even begged them to consider starting a kindergarten.
Then came the night I was programming our DVR to record various shows throughout the week. At that moment it really dawned on me that I was about to send Caroline off to kindergarten. For the last five years, as our tastes graduated from Sesame Street to Pinky Dinky Doo to Tom and Jerry, the majority of our mornings had been spent snuggling on the couch watching TV together before we started our day. But now we were about to enter into the world of schedules and alarm clocks and extracurricular activities.
It’s not like I didn’t know it was coming. But there it was, looming big and bright on the horizon. And that’s when something inside me began to ache more than a little. I wasn’t ready to send my girl off to a big, wide world where she’d carry her own lunch tray and pick out what kind of milk she wanted. Of course, she doesn’t even like milk, but that wasn’t the point.
So I spent that summer dreading August. I didn’t want school to start. I didn’t want to send my baby to school, even though I tried to appear really excited every time we talked about it because I did
n’t want her to sense my fear. You know what they say about bees and dogs and five-year-olds.
About two weeks before school began, I was getting my hair cut, and my hairdresser asked me about Caroline—specifically how I disciplined Caroline when she acted up or did something wrong.
Here’s what I said: “Lately I haven’t had to discipline her that much. The year she was three was really hard because she tested me on everything, but now that she’s five, I rarely have to discipline her. She knows I’m serious when I give her a look or get a certain tone in my voice, and she’ll usually do whatever I’ve asked her to do.”
Well, that was a mistake.
It was like I opened the vault of child-rearing fate and yelled, “This whole parenting thing is so easy! I have figured it all out!”
Don’t ever do that. It’s a big mistake.
Because the following two weeks were filled with more meltdowns and drama than an episode of The Bachelor.
At one point I put Caroline in time-out, and when I went in her room, I began to explain to her that Mama is the boss and she can’t talk back to me. She looked at me and said, “If you say you’re the boss one more time, I’m going to get myself so worked up that I don’t know what I’ll do.” At which point I sent a flurry of prayers upward in the hope that God would sustain me for the next twenty years.
That’s when I began to stare longingly at the calendar and count down the days until school started, because every day ended with my feeling tired and frustrated from fighting one battle after another all day long.
She was ready. I knew without a doubt that she was ready. It was evident in everything she did: from her fierce independence to the way she breezed through Kindergarten Basics, the workbook filled with exercises I’d bought for her. She was my social butterfly, and she was ready to fly.
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