2:00 a.m., and I hear my daughter cough in the next room. A phlegmy, loose rattle that provokes gagging. I’m on my feet, hitting the floor to her room in time to catch the first round of vomit as it lands on her bedspread. There is no such thing as damage control here. I hold her hair back and instruct her to “get it all out”. She does so, and I find myself flashing back to dinner. What did I feed her that would come up as that color? She looks up with wide eyes, “I think I’m all done, Mom.” The bedspread is covered, and her nightgown is now soaked. I lead her to the bathroom and wash her up, stripping off the nightgown and wrapping her naked body in a towel until I can dig out a pair of pajamas from the ominous pile of clothes that has summited the top of the laundry basket. Why didn’t I do a load of wash last night? I dress my daughter, and put her in my bed with a Tupperware bowl next to her. With single-minded focus that hides the fact that I have only been asleep for two hours, I strip her bed, peeling back the covers in onion fashion to find out how far the damage has reached. Everything comes off…thank god the mattress pad is waterproof. The entire set of bedding is stuffed into the washing machine; it has my complete trust that it can take care of it better than I can. Back in my bed with my sick daughter, I hold her again as she is racked with another round of nausea. Her stomach holds so little, that soon there is nothing but phlegm to expel. I give up the idea of sleep and take her to the living room where we watch Scooby Doo until she is too tired to be concerned with what is happening inside her belly. At 3:30, I help her back into my bed and curl up around her tiny frame. I wrap her cold feet up inside my warm hands and listen for warning signs that the nausea has returned. It does, several times; she bolts upright from sleep and by 5:00, we have the whole routine down to a type of twisted march. At 5:30, I give up and go to the kitchen for coffee. I can still smell vomit (just exactly how long does that smell last in your nostrils?), but I wait until her father arrives at 6:00 to take my shower.
The worst part about last night was not the lack of sleep, or watching my daughter lose herself so completely in this illness she could not control, but the fact that she apologized to me for being sick. There are days when I feel as if I parent well, and my daughter may not need therapy as an adult to come to terms with all of the ills I have borne upon her. Today is not one of those “confident in my parenting skills” days. Through all of my honest effort, I have somehow placed upon her the need to apologize to me for the moments in life when she finds herself incapable of perfection. There is no book for this, and I’m not sure how it was accomplished or how to fix it.
The tragedy of parenthood is that despite how hard we try, because we are flawed, so too will our parenting be.
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