Canceling Out

Last night, about an hour after I'd gone to sleep, I woke up to a loud thump from Lily's room, followed by her appearance in our bedroom doorway. She uttered the words no parent wants to hear in the middle of the night from a child too old to shower solo: Mama. I threw up.

She was cool to the touch, felt better already, and we both decided the combination of foods she had consumed at the birthday party she'd attended and then when we went shopping that evening had likely caused the "situation." Which was that every single piece of bedding in her room, as well as her pajamas, the floor, several stuffed animals, all of the pillows and her face, neck and hair were coated in vomit. I stripped the bed, stripped her, at which point she said, stating the obvious, I think you will have to put me in the bathtub. I did, and hosed her down with the hand-held shower head, and rubbed her dry with a towel, and found her clean pajamas, and didn't protest when she said she wanted me to sleep with her in the big bed in Annika's room. As she drifted off in my arms I whispered, Now don't throw up on me. Turn away if you feel sick again, at which she giggled--almost asleep--and said, Oh, Mama. You're teasing me.

No, I thought to myself, as I lay in the unfamiliar bed, now wide awake, my slight, newly sweet-smelling, wet-haired girl snoring lightly in my arms. I'm not teasing. And for a change, a refreshing change, I felt old in a good way, old enough to be the person to clean up the mess so thoroughly, to handle the crisis so capably, and most of all, to offer comfort and solace, as I remember so vividly being offered it myself in the middle of the night, as recently as the night this very child I was holding was born.

And then this morning, with no recurrence of sickness, I was tired, daunted by the laundry in the cold light of day, distracted by the snowfall and other matters, and too scattered to focus on proper mothering as I drank my first of many subsequent cups of coffee. Which is why when I watched Annika watch Sadie slurp water from her metal dog dish, held off the ground in a rack that holds two, and then crouch down on the floor in front of the dish Sadie had just lapped from, I knew what was coming, and I just kept watching.

A few laps, and then she stood up, pleased with herself, and padded over to me, embracing my legs. Wa-wa, she said. Agua.

Yes, I agreed. Water.

I wish my mother weren't going to read this. I will refrain from any other (unnecessary) commentary.