The Irreverent Widow

There are two sounds that can simultaneously awaken me from a deep sleep…and strike fear into my heart.  The first is the sound of a gargantuan pine tree falling onto my house (see my “Oh Tannenbaum” blog post from the end of February).  The second is the sound of a child. Vomiting. IN MY BED.

Such is the way I began this delightful Sunday morning. My youngest son had climbed into bed with me somewhere around 6 AM. Presumably, to snuggle. I thought, “how sweet.”  I thought, “I love being a mom.”  I thought, “I wonder how much longer until the dreaded day when he’ll be too grown up and too cool to want to snuggle with his mom anymore?”

The next thing I know, it is perhaps 20 minutes later…and I am jolted out of a sound sleep by a horrible retching sound… and he is throwing up.  On my floor…on my pillow…on my imported German goose down comforter.  With the lovely 600 thread count cover.

I am suddenly in “haz mat mode.”  It’s not at all unlike cleaning up after a nuclear power plant incident. Although a child has not vomited in my house in quite some time , I know the drill all too well.   It is a multi-step, disgusting process.  You are tired,  shell-shocked, stifling your own gag reflex….and yet, you have this poor child looking at you, clearly feeling as if he might heave-ho again at any moment.  You must put your own displeasure on hold.  You must think of his needs.  You feel awful for his plight.  Truth be told, you are also probably a teensy bit relieved to merely be the one doing the cleaning up….rather than the actual throwing-up.

And when you have cleaned everything up and Lysoled the hell out of everything…when you have put the second load of bed linens into the washing machine…when you have  lovingly wiped his face with a soft, warm washcloth and covered him in clean blankets and brushed the hair from his weary eyes….when he has drifted back to sleep……..

Rest assured, he WILL do it.  AGAIN!

Yuck!

And this, dear reader, is why I like men with children.  They understand. They empathize. They feel your pain.

We have a “throw up bowl” in our house. It is blue. Plastic. Cheap. We all know where it is located. And we all know it’s the throw-up bowl.

I am pretty certain that most households with children in them have a designated throw-up bowl.  My 74 year old mother has a throw-up bowl at her house.  It resides under her bathroom sink.  The only reason she has it is because she once had children living in her house.  And later, had grandchildren who would stay overnight. And ,occasionally, toss the homemade cookies she had baked.

People with no children rarely have throw-up bowls.

I once dated a man who likened presiding over his office staff to my being a single parent to  three dependent children.

I could agree with the basic analogy.  I tried not to blatantly roll my eyeballs when he would say things such as this. Oddly, I don’t imagine he ever had to deal with his office manager throwing up in his bed at 6AM on a Sunday morning. Unless, perhaps, he had taken her out  on a date that involved one too many martinis the night before.

And I know he didn’t own a throw-up bowl.