It started out something like this:
"Mom?"
I had just fallen asleep. Deep sleep. We got home very late from choir and The Baby had been kicking me in the face and any other soft flesh she could reach repeatedly. All night long.
"Mom!" This time, the knock was forceful enough that I knew I couldn't keep pretending it was mice. Besides, we don't have mice.
"What's the matter, Monet?"
"I...I threw up..."
I heard Bo groan that "oh-no-not-again" groan he reserves especially for puking incidents. I don't know why he does this. I doubt that he has ever cleaned up puke in his whole parenting career.
"Did you make it to the bathroom?" Bo asked groggily from his side of the bed.
"Yeah..." Bo returned to snoring. But the answer sounded unsure to me.
I climbed out of bed leaving the snoring husband and sleeping child, and successfully resisting the urge to slam things around loudly in the general vicinity of both of their eardrums.
Monet made it to the bathroom, indeed. I could tell by the increasingly strong buteric acid smell and the increasingly larger puddles of puke leading to the powder room floor.
"Sorry, Mom." The poor sick child stood beside me waiting for my wrath. "I just opened my mouth, and out it came."
He offered to help clean up, but I pointed him to the couch accompanied by a Wal*Mart bag-lined mixing bowl, telling him that, no, I wasn't angry with him. I actually meant it.
It took two rolls of paper towels to clean up all that puke. I'm sure you wanted to hear that, but here's the thing: you think a lot while you're going through two rolls of paper towels worth of puke. Mostly, you think about anything that keeps you from puking, too.
So, I was thinking about anything that would keep me from puking, which, by the way, does NOT include puke, lunch, vomit, breakfast, cleaning up puke, dinner, chunks of upchuck or puking (wow. that should really bring the interesting google searches). The best thing I could come up with was to praise God that I had hardwood floors, that this wonderful mess was not sinking into a deep, plush brand new carpeting.
And I was thinking about parenting, about how many things we do during the day that we don't want to do, and about what that does to our character. I thought about what I tell my kids, to do all things without grumbling or complaining, and that includes, yes, even cleaning up puke at 2:00 in the morning.
Suddenly it occured to me what day this was.
Fifteen years ago this morning, just after two a.m. I was praising God for keeping His promises:
A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when
her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is
born into the world. ~John 16:21
Just after two a.m fifteen years ago., I was holding the first child who would puke on my carpet, speak her first word: "alligator," fight with me about learning to read and then devour every book she would touch, learn sign language to Rich Mullins' Step by Step and sing it while I washed the dishes, invent words like "andicated*" and "come-offable**", make me cry with her beautiful singing voice, make me laugh with her incredible sense of humor, and make me feel so much better about being a mom by hugging me tightly and declaring that I really haven't "lost touch."
Just after two a.m. fifteen years ago today, my dear daughter Bard made her grand entrance into this world, kicking and screaming, and my life has never been the same.
I've never stuck with anything for fifteen years. Not a single thing. Well, unless you count
eating chocolate, procrastinating or whining. But for fifteen whole, complete and total years, I have been a parent. And a half-decent one at that.Thank you, Bard, for making me a mom, for making me a better person and for being my friend.
Here's to fifteen years of cleaning up puke.
And here's looking foward to many more.
