Sick Days

Earlier this week I injured myself. Nothing serious, the only thing actually broken is my pride. Just slipped in a ½ inch puddle and sprained my foot. Very gracefully I might add. But the nature of my injury isn’t my point. My point is, that no matter how doting D tried to be, and how considerate Bean thought she was being, I still wasn’t able to give my foot the rest it so badly needed to properly heal. And it occurred to me that short of D & Bean being out of town while I had pneumonia, as a mom I have never gotten to properly be sick or injured. And this is where some of our Mom-Superpowers come into play. Not the lift a Pinto off of your child superpowers, but the dead-on-your-feet, brain leaking out of your nose, elephant sitting on your chest with the cough of 85 year old 2 pack a day habit and still upright and coherently making a grocery list while efficiently feeding a toddler superpower.

And that’s what Moms do. Moms everywhere. We stuff some tissues up our nose, overdose on DayQuil and keep going until the very last child is asleep. And then after we have swept through the house to assess the damage of the day, we finally slip into a blissful, medically induced coma, only to be awoken by little fingers prying open your eyes, urgently whispering about the monster in her closet because in your Vick’s haze, you forgot to do Monster Spray. So you wake your sorry ass up, blindly spray, hoping not to temporarily blind your child in the process. Then you shuffle back to the couch. Do you know why you’re on the couch? Because your husband has to work tomorrow and the lung you’re currently hacking up is keeping him awake. On the bright side at least you don’t have to listen to his snoring AND you get the T.V. to yourself 🙂

But the fun doesn’t end there. Your walking plague isn’t limited to just one day. That would be too easy. Day 2 is even more fun. Now you’re sweating like a sinner in church because your temperature has risen to a degree hot enough to cook an egg on your forehead. Along with a sizzling temperature comes a delirium the likes of which Hunter S. Thompson writes about. While you are enduring your own personal sauna, you still have children and a husband who need breakfasts, lunches packed, clothes picked out, shoes tied and normal things of that nature. After several attempts to accomplish these tasks, you manage to find socks, though not necessarily matching, but who’s going to see them anyway. You also manage to pack lunches, although the nutritional content is somewhat questionable. Let’s not even talk about the tied shoes…..that’s why Velcro was invented. Sick moms. Velcro is your lifeblood.

Sometime between the start of school and the end of school, along with your own personal inferno, your stomach decides to perform such a stunning display of intestinal pyrotechnics it would make the Imagineers in charge of the fireworks at Disney envious. And I wish it were simply one orifice that had to deal with guttural exorcism going on inside you. While this is going on, Moms somehow manage to get something resembling dinner on the table and help with the homework. At the end of yet another day of being an incubus for the Bubonic Plague, your symptoms seem to finally be subsiding. And your famliy’s universe continued, maybe with a hiccup here or there. And you did it all standing up. Any other human being would’ve succumbed to whatever bug you contracted. Which by the way, you probably got attending one preschool/kindergarten, play date, etc. Because just like you teach your kids…Sharing Is Caring. But I digress. A lesser human would’ve crawled into bed and then moved their misery to the bathroom once the volcano began erupting. My point is; Moms don’t get sick days. When you have a job, you get sick days. Even if you work in a position that you have to call out and lose money. You still get to be sick. Moms don’t. We don’t get sick days. We don’t get breaks. Sometimes the stars align and the husband can take over or a relative can help out. While recovering from my C-section I was lucky enough to have my mom come help me. She cooked. She cleaned. Hell, she even folded a mountain of laundry that I couldn’t even fathom completing. I was so happy to be able to take a nap, eat a hot meal, and not have to put away weeks’ worth of clothes. When D gets sick, I nurse him back to health. I get him medicine, make him soup, set him up with his favorite blanket and movies and pretty much pump him so full of drugs he passes out. When Bean is sick, same deal. Except when she is sick, it’s time to go to the doctor because she doesn’t get sick. So I sit in the waiting room for hours while she endures x-rays and yucky antibiotics. But when I’m sick, there’s no one to do those things for me. D has to work and as much she would love to help, Bean just isn’t able to run to Walgreens and get ramen and medicine. So I buckle down and deal with it. As does every other mom out there. So if you’re reading this and you’re not a mom, the next time you know one is sick, help her out. Watch her kid(s) for a bit. Make her some soup. Christ, let her sleep at your house. If you’re reading this as a husband, stop and appreciate what your wife does on a daily basis, especially when she is sick. I wish I could say I’m being a martyr, but sadly I’m not. If you are reading this and were not raised by a pack of wolves, thank your mother. Now. Call her and ask how she is feeling. And if she says “a little under the weather”, you get that woman some goddamn chicken noodle soup!! It’s not just good for the soul!

*On a side note: As a I finished this piece, Bean came down with a helluva cold, even causing her to miss school. She’s walking around with the Tissue-Box contraption I found on Pinterest, looking pathetic. And you know who is doing 90% of the immediate care-taking while completely minor tasks like grocery shopping and disinfecting every single thing she touches….ME! Because you can’t spell AWESOME without ME!!!

Til next time….keep those toes in the sand, even if it’s just in your imagination.