There's Gold in Them There Dry Heaves

Okay, the “low-low spring sale” mentioned at the start of my last post Hot Cougar Love? That was the stomach flu. I was discounting old material because of epic vomiting. I know that as a writer mama I am supposed to spin this hay into gold, but the hay smelled like vomit and anyway, a girl’s gotta sleep.

I’m back, though. And I have to tell you: there was a hidden treasure in the whole affair. We are in the midst – no, that’s probably too optimistic – we are at the beginning of the oppositional phase. Mother Culture calls it the terrible two’s, and already, I understand why. My friend, L. Carol Scott, who has a PhD and a masters in various developmental disciplines , has a nicer frame for it. She calls it independence, the second “Childhood Treasure.” She says that the Fox is learning that, not only is he separate from me, that he is capable of wanting something different than I want. This, says wise friend Dr. Scott, is akin to waking up one morning and finding fairies in your corn flakes. Okay. She doesn’t say that, that’s my spin. His mind is unshackled: It’s a brave new world, Aldous. There’s Technicolor in those slippers, Dorothy.

There’s gold in them there dry heaves.

You see, we go in for positive discipline, because the science seems to support it and my heart says yes to it. But I am a full-time stay-at-home and though before the Fox I had never dreamed that I could love someone this much, I also long for what friend Michele calls “a competence jones.” The old feeling of knowing that I am rocking the house. Sometimes when the food is flinging and the meltdown is nigh and I am trying to find one more positive alternative, I just feel like saying “Well, what the f#$! do you want? Sweetie?”

Sometimes, on a very bad day, it feels like I am a butler for a chimpanzee with a personality disorder.

It’s the choices. Offering them to him, making them myself. They come at me hard and fast all day. He is climbing the chair. This is developmentally appropriate. Should I stop him now? He is pushing the chair. This too. He is pushing the chair over to the drawer where the knives and matches are. Just kidding. But every new learning frontier discovers some new item that we have to negotiate. It would be easiest to just say no. Not to look for the “yes.” And while, there are no yeses with the knives ( Not until after circus camp, wherein maybe he learns to be the knife thrower, please, all gods and goddesses, not the pretty one in the bullseye..) While there are no yeses with knives, they can be found in most cases. Like yesterday, when the Fox figured out how to open the middle drawer in my Chinese cabinet and got out my eyeglasses. And wanted to turn them into silly putty. And we got through that one. We were both well rested, and no puking for days, so he was able to go there. “We need to put those back,” I said. As soon as I reached for them, the tears. The warm-up whine, which precedes the scream. “Let mama show you,” I said. And wonder of wonders, he went for it. I showed him how to fold the arms, then gave them to him. And he did it! I said, “Let’s put them back in the case in mama’s drawer.” And he did that too! It felt like I had just won the fifty-first senate vote in my old campaign days. He just wanted to succeed at his job.

I know how he feels.

Hence the gold: can you spot it? Friday night, the Fox finally went to bed at 9:30. Then woke up at 9:50 with the dry heaves. Then 10:17, 10:48, 11:12. Each time, I was on my feet and in there before the second heave hit. There was the Fox in the dark, standing at the crib rail, another heave and him crying, waving both hands, “All done! All done!” Make it stop, Mama! Me gathering him up, careful not to squish his middle. “I know, honey. I wish you were all done, too.” I wiped his mouth and held him until it was over and then he passed out, just went limp. (I tended bar for many years; I know how to handle puking and passing out.) And I would lay him back down in his crib and go lay down in my bed, and listen to the monitor for 20 or 30 minutes until it started again. So it went until about 2:30 am.

The thing is: I knew what to do. That’s the gold, reader. I knew that I was “doing the right thing.” Why does “doing the right thing” have such terrible power? It is the hardest thing about parenting. It is a job, and I want to do it “right.” It is a labyrinth and I will never leave it. It is a mission and I want only, sometimes, dear divine mama, sometimes, to know I am giving the Fox what he needs to become him. And the thing about this job-labyrinth-mission is that you hardly ever do. You hardly ever know.

But not Friday. Through the sleeplessness, the laundry and the sad feelings I had for him, wishing I could make it “All done!” there were no choices, there was no uncertainty. One night where I had no rest for my body, but perfect respite for my mind: I had only to offer my love. My wet washcloth and my warm arms.