Showing posts with label Down Memory Lane. Show all posts

We have a tough time doing anything together as a family. For example, the Middle Child can’t tolerate a lot of noise yet the Big Guy can’t live and breathe without making a lot of noise. When noise happens, particularly whilst watching TV or eating dinner or just hanging out in the same general area, the Middle Child gets very nasty. Meanwhile, the Big Guy can’t tolerate an excess of emotion of any kind, particularly the brand of nastiness at which the Middle Child excels. Indeed, it is imperative that all of us be inordinately even-keeled and soft spoken in order to prevent the Big Guy from spinning off into one emotional extreme or the other. This makes watching TV or even eating dinner together nigh on impossible. You know that whole thing about eating dinner together as a family every night in order to safeguard the welfare of our children? At our house, it has the opposite effect.

In addition, (as if that weren’t enough) the Big Guy needs a very consistent routine, particularly during the witching hour which at our house starts pretty much around 4 P.M. and continues until we can manage to hog-tie, blindfold and gag the three of them and get ‘em into bed. Needless to say, we don’t go out very often, especially not at night, not even individually. The hog-tying is a two person job and as the Spouse and I are fond of one another, we hate to abandon each other at such a time. However, one hot late-summer day, we received an invitation to attend a pool party later that night at the home of a family from church. I wanted to say no, I should have said no, it was on the tip of my tongue to say no, but this family is part of a large extended family, a pillar of the church kind of family, and I felt that we would somehow become social outcasts if I rejected their invitation. Besides, they had just built a large lovely home with an indoor pool and I confess I wanted to see how the other half live.

So we went.

We were the first of about seven or eight families to arrive but the Nice Family have a large number of fun active boys who were all in the pool having a swell time playing King of the Giant Inflatable Octopus. Our Little Guy took one look at the rough play and went right to the hot tub. The Middle Child disdained the boy action as well, despite her emphatic claims that she is not a girly-girl. The Big Guy, however, joined right in the fun. Never mind that he outweighed the biggest boy in the pool by at least 100 pounds and was sadly lacking in coordination, he attempted to fling himself onto the giant octopus with the determination of a beached whale desperate to live. Amazingly, in light of the time of evening and his utter and total failure to become king of the giant octopus (or anything else for that matter) the Big Guy was having a great time and laughing like a drowning hyena (that is, if hyenas laugh while drowning or even come near water except to drink it and so on and so forth). Sad to say, launching ones-self into the air simultaneous to hysterical laughter, uses a lot of stomach muscles, muscles which, in this case, don’t often get that kind of intense work-out. Sadder to say, stomach muscles have everything to do with your, er, stomach and when they contract uncontrollably from unaccustomed usage, they, well, er, contract.

Needless to say, said stomach muscles contracted spectacularly and with perfect timing; in other words, just in time for the rest of the families who had been invited to the party to enter the pool area and have a front row seat to the show we like to call “What The Big Guy Had For Dinner”. Those who were (inevitably) late to the party didn’t miss much as it took The Spouse a full forty five minutes to broom the evidence from the bottom of the pool. Lucky for the other swimmers (who, in fairness, could have been sent flying to their deaths through the Big Guy’s attempts at King-dom rather than merely erupted upon) this nice indoor pool was so ginormous they could retire to the other side while clean-up (gag!) proceeded. Meanwhile, Mr. Nice took the Big Guy to the attached bathroom/steam room/shower, the one that prevented wet dirty kids from tracking dirty wetness through the house, and got him cleaned up. I admired the kindness of Mr. Nice. Still I was willing to bet a pony Mr. Nice, as he hosed down my large son, was thinking the chunk of change he spent on that washroom was worth every penny.

Was it a horribly humiliating traumatic experience? Yes, it was. Did we get over it? Yes, I am proud to say we carried on exactly as if it hadn’t happened. The party went on, people reacted (or didn’t) exactly as I would have wished and I was busy happily contemplating punch and cookies. That was when The Spouse appeared at my elbow, leaned into me the way he does when he is feeling paranoid about being overheard and hissed, “The Big Guy and I are leaving. We’re going to slip out the side door. See ya!”

“But, but,” I spluttered, “what if someone notices? How will I and the Middle Child and the Little Guy get home?!?”

He made no reply, only tossed the cell phone at me and slipped away into the night.

(Why We Can’t Take The Big Guy Anywhere #48)

I knew what The Spouse was thinking, “Here we are, invited to the home of a scion of the church for the very first time, a nice big expensive home with a nice big expensive pool, and my son ralphs all over everything! We can’t take him anywhere! He is 16! When are family activities going to get any better? Will they ever be tolerable? Will we be isolated from the rest of humanity forever?” And then, “I’m hungry (read: tired, humiliated, over-whelmed and exhausted)! I’m going home to get something to eat!” (read: eat, watch TV, sleep and generally self-medicate).

Heck, we coulda done that without leaving the house! We could have avoided the whole sorry mess. Our children could have knocked an entire session off of a long line of therapy sessions AND I wouldn’t have had to feel sorry for the Nice Family who had to endure the desecration of their pool.

This title might sound intentionally titillating but I assure you, it is the absolute truth. I swung the bedroom door open on my then 12 year old son and 7 year old daughter to find them in bed. Under the covers. Lying still as statues, frozen in fear of discovery.

I was horrified. Where had I gone wrong? Had I been too neglectful of their needs while taking care of the new baby? Sure, I had been tired, beyond tired, and so had The Spouse. The baby was premature and needed to eat every two hours and I was suffering from undiagnosed fibromyalgia. The Spouse was taking on at least one feeding a night and though he had been on meds for quite a while at this point, it was taking a long time to overcome the affects of 30 years of untreated depression and anxiety. Every time I turned around, he was napping. And most of the time, I was napping right beside him. Was it any wonder my children felt deprived? Unattended? Free to lead a life of sin and depravity while their parents slept off another night of high living?

These were the thoughts that crowded my sleep-deprived (read: dead) brain. Of course I didn’t think they were really doing something wrong. They were far too innocent for that, even the 12 year old whose developmental age was very close to his sister’s at the time. I was more concerned with what they might have seen, heard or simply discerned. True, it had been a while . . . Attempting to put my lackluster brain to work, my mind waded through the murky past; I had a newborn so needless to say, not much action there, prior to that I had had a difficult pregnancy, even less action there, but the baby was in my arms so I knew something had to have happened in the not too distant past. Undeniably, there had been opportunity for exposure.

Consumed with guilt, my brain flooded with all the reasons I was a rotten mom. I drudged up the courage to ask as casually as I could manage, “What are you guys doing?” I think my voice might have quavered just a little but I’m not sure. Many details of my youngest child’s first year still elude me.

My mildness reassured them and the Middle Child dared to look at me. “We’re playing house,” she said in a voice that quivered.

Now came the hard question. “Ummm, and just exactly what is it you are supposed to be doing in that there bed an’ all?” I asked, wincing in anticipation of an answer that would reveal my total failure as a mother.

The Big Guy, who knew he was in potential trouble and therefore had been hiding under the sheet, flipped it away and with a big smile on his face shouted, “Taking a nap, of course!”

Things went a bit off-kilter for a second as my upside down world re-righted itself and I could make sense of his reply. Shaking the dizzy out of my brain and the temptation to sag in relief out of my bones, I squeezed the baby tighter in my arms in renewed hope for a bright tomorrow. A nap! Well, I’ll be!

And then, because Mom Guilt is a demanding master and must be fed at all times, I thought, A nap!?! My kids were playing house by pretending to take a nap? Wandering aimlessly down the hall to my waiting bed, I questioned the legitimacy of my role as wife, mother and even woman. Could we have been napping too much? Would this excess of napping mar my children for life? Would their relationships with their spouses be nothing but a nap fest? Frantically I scanned my memory for any mention in any book I had read, parenting or otherwise, that mentioned a connection between the excessive napping of parents and the potential for becoming a mass murderer in adulthood.

I put the baby on the bed next to my husband as I fell into my usual spot next to him, a place where the three of us had spent a lot of quality time together. Not conscious time, but still.

My husband stirred and mumbled, “Are the kids okay?”

“Sure,” I said, “they’re fine. You know, honey, I think they are going to grow up to be just like us.”

“That’s nice,” he murmured into his heavily drooled-upon pillow.

Plumping up my own pillow, I thought about what just happened and what the fruits might be. After all, it's the fruits that matter. I know! I am teaching them that when they are tired, they should rest! Hey, Heidi, you’re good! I thought just before I tumbled into sleep. The Mom Guilt was appeased for another day.

(In my defense, lest this post come across as complaining, I would like to make clear that my motto is : Laugh and live, cry and die) My 18-year-old son has the gag reflex of an infant. In fact, its at about the same level as my youngest, when he was born three weeks early and nearly gagged to death on account of his immature, er, gag reflex. In fact, during his elementary school years, Michael gagged on his own saliva nearly every morning in light of the over-night accumulated build-up. Gagging, sad to say, often results in barfing. To whit, Michael has barfed in restaurants, in bed, on the dentist, even whilst seated on the throne. It has happened as recently as last month. Did you know that there are at least 20 euphemisms for tossing your tacos? We think about that kind of thing a lot at our house. (And, might I add, how lucky am I, because I will need to use most of them during this post). That is why, when he started feeling gaggy the Christmas morn he was 16, we didn’t think too much about it. Well, we thought about it, enough to utter the usual gentle proddings of “just get to the sink, honey,” but not enough to wonder why he continued to sit on the floor surrounded by his newly opened Christmas gifts (most of them Yu-gi-oh cards—I guess you’re never too old) with his eyes as wide as saucers. After all, he was as used to his habit of blowing chunks as were we. In hindsight, I can see that he clearly felt the enormity of the situation, a subject upon which the rest of us were still woefully uninformed. Something about that enormity made him temporarily deaf, dumb and blind.

He did get up, eventually, but not until after he had puked on his Christmas presents, each and every one, with a thoroughness that defies description. At least, a tolerable one. Our gentle proddings became more insistent. “Michael! Run to the sink!!” Instead, he stood and picked up a hand towel from the kitchen counter, pressing it to his mouth so that when the spewing commenced, it went off in every direction like a pinwheel. This all happened so fast, it was hard to make a decision. Do we run and forcibly shove his face into the sink or do we duck and cover, hoping it would soon be over? My daughter simply burst into violent tears and ran to her room. Another Christmas ruined. I can’t wait to pay the therapy bill for that one.

When Michael finally stopped heaving, we made it within a few steps of him where he stood in the center of our 5 X 3 foot kitchen (its cute, its cottagey, its sweet, say what you will but it’s dang small) before the fire-hosing began. This was no ordinary upheaval. My 250 pound son opened his mouth as wide as it would go, in my estimation, a good 8 inches in diameter (his mouth is about as big as my kitchen is small) and, hmmm . . . how to say this? Let’s just say the stuff coming out of him was like an 8 inch wide jet-spray that hosed down every counter, appliance, cabinet door and square inch of my kitchen floor whilst he rotated slowly in place like a lawn sprinkler. It was like the TV show Supernatural when the demon flies out of the mouth of the innocent host, or that movie with the head that rotates while green vomit spews out of it (but with a body attached). Plus, it wasn’t green, mostly brown, the color of the Swedish meatballs we had for Christmas Eve dinner the night before.

When it was all over, I took stock of the situation. The presents could be saved since those collectible cards are coated with some kind of protective film, apparently designed for moments like this (though it isn’t enough to keep out pool water once submerged, something I learned during one of those “Do what I say, or else” episodes) and surely I would wash up okay, as well. However, the kitchen floor looked like some kind of ecological disaster. You know, the kind we are always being warned about if we don’t do our best to keep our lakes and oceans clean. It was stinky, warm, and I could have sworn it bubbled. We didn’t make it to church that morning. It started rather early in the A.M. and though we had planned to go, we hadn’t counted on spending an hour cleaning the kitchen first.

In Michael’s defense, it wasn’t his gag reflex to blame for this particular incident. He actually had the stomach flu, something that became evident when he continued to throw up every half hour until what was coming out of him was the color of egg yolks. I kid you not, we could have fried it up for breakfast except that nobody really felt like eating at that point.

Since I would not wish this bug on my worst enemy we decided not to have dinner with family that day. We spent a quiet Christmas at home, watching our other children play with their gifts between those half hour bouts of up-chucking. We did get a doctor’s appointment for him in a nearby city, the closest our insurance could provide on Christmas Day. We brought a large bowl with us which was brutally abused every half hour like clockwork. The doctor prescribed an enema (since anything by mouth would not stay down) with hopes it would decrease the nausea and make him sleep.

Driving home from the doctor’s office, I tried not to think about the enema. Applying one was beyond my son’s motor skill capacities and beyond my husband’s squeamish threshold. I sighed, knowing it would have to be me who shoved a cold pellet up the rear of my childlike man-sized son since I was willing to bet a pony that neither my 11 or 4 year old were up to the job. I chose to focus, instead, on the beauty of the downtown area through which I headed for home where holiday lights were on and glittering in store windows and shops, lighting up the foggy, silent afternoon. It was very festive, a priceless Christmas memory, so, as usual, thank you, Michael. You’re the man!

P.S. Sorry no pic--it defies illustration.