I Want Daddy

Over the weekend I was living it up with a basket of laundry to fold and a particularly rousing episode of Jeopardy! on the tube when I heard a weird noise coming from my daughter’s room. To the casual observer it would have just been a little cough. To mom ears, it was the death knell.

please don't let it be barf, please don't let it be barf, please don't let it be barf

We had barf.

Nothing works me into a neurotic lather like vomit. I can handle pretty much any illness without batting an eye, but when vomit is involved, I immediately become Woody Allen on the inside. I’m terrified I’m going to get it, I don’t want to touch it, I don’t want to look at it long enough to clean it, I don’t want to smell it and I don’t want to interact with it.  You know that friend in college that would hold your hair back while you were puking up grape flavored Bartles and Jaymes in the front yard of that dude’s house that you guys met at the ASU game? I’m not that friend. I’m not even the friend who is pointing and laughing. I’m the friend who’s running back into the house with her fingers in her ears while going “La la la la” to block out all the noise you’re making and now all the noise I’m making with my theatrical gagging . Yes, your terrible misfortune and inability to hold down cloyingly sweet chick liquor will make me the bitchy friend. This aversion runs so deep that it led to my husband and I agreeing before we had kids that all poop related mishaps would fall squarely on my shoulders while all situations involving vomit would be left solely to him.

I'm not in this picture because I peaced right on out of there.

Of course fate is a spiteful whore and with the exception of one episode, I’ve been the sole parental unit available each and every time a kid in this house has lost their lunch.

Maybe it was born of the fact that I was the only one around and HAD to take charge or maybe there is something to the adage that things coming out of your kids seem less vile to you than if they’d come out of someone else’s cake hole but my whole reaction to barf has changed.  Don’t get me wrong, if you hork in front of me you’re still on your own, but my kids just don’t elicit that reaction. I jump into action, cleaning them up and administering Gatorade like a pro with nary a gag to be heard. As a person, I've grown.

Which brings me to the coughing sound that rang out in the night right in the middle of Double Jeopardy! last Friday. I walked into Julia’s room to see that she had in fact become sick, not just all over herself and her bed but the wall beside her bed too. I cleaned her up, changed her sheets, Lysol-ed the wall, put on Frozen and made a little nest for myself on her floor next to the trash can I’d commandeered from the bathroom. We’d get through this together, for I was Super Mom.

Oh yeah, this is me.

    

 The process was repeated again 10 minutes later when it was deemed more comfortable to toss her cookies a second time on her fresh sheets and pillow instead of the trash can. I changed everything again, all while being as comforting as I could be. The poor kid looked pathetic and I really did feel horrible for her. With a lot of “Mommy’s here” and “Mommy will take care of you”, I dragged her mattress out to the family room and plopped down on the couch (Laying on her floor for 10 minutes was enough. I’m not 21 anymore and nothing proves that more than lying on a floor for any duration of time. Even Super Mom has her joints to consider.)

Poor kid

Back rubbing, hair holding, soothing words and calming singing abounded as I held the trash can under her head and willed her to get everything up so she could feel better. By 2:30am I was bleary eyed and worried, having done everything in my power to make her feel as comfortable as possible. As the dry heaves racked her body once more and I rubbed her back, whispering softly to her that it would be alright, that mommy was here, she said:

“I <gak> want <gak> Daddy.”

Really? I mean, seriously? I’m the one who just hosed you down, rinsed your mouth out, wiped up the Kandinsky painting you tried to replicate on your wall, wrestled your mattress down the hall and into the family room and did two loads of laundry in the middle of the night, all while taking shifts holding your hair back and cooing to you while you chundered up so much that I’m pretty sure a license plate came out of you and you want daddy?

The best mothers will say that they understand, that they don’t expect recognition for all that they do. They’d say that it’s a normal reaction, that 4-year-old girls are attached to their daddy’s and it’s natural for them to want his comfort.

Well, I've never claimed to be the best mother and I’m here to tell you that shit sucked.

All I wanted to do was make her feel better, to be the soothing presence that people think of when they think about their mama. Her words made me feel like I’d failed, like if I’d been doing a good enough job taking care of her she wouldn't feel as though she needed daddy to step in. I wasn't merely not good enough, I wasn't even enough period.

The better animal, in this instance, being Daddy.

I realize, with my head, that my thinking was highly over dramatic and that her desire to have daddy near was in no way intended as a rejection of me, but I still sat sullenly on the couch as she finally fell into a fitful sleep, my eyes burning with exhaustion and my hair stinking of hospital grade disinfectant. Why was I chopped liver? Was my position as the primary care giver causing a case of overexposure? Was a feeling of ambivalence, or worse, resentment resulting from my constant directives to clean rooms, put on shoes, finish homework, eat two more bites, take fingers out of noses, put the toys away, try to go potty before we leave, go to time out, stop licking the dog bowl, don’t throw that inside, that isn’t food, my phone isn’t a football, wipe that up, drink some more milk, keep your diaper on, don’t unbuckle yourself on the freeway, no we can’t listen to Let It Go again, don’t sit on your brother’s face, and stop punching your sandwich?

The worst of it seemed to pass and around 4 in the morning I gingerly attempted to roll off of the couch to go to the bathroom without waking her.

“Don’t leave me, Mommy.”

Her small, whispered voice stopped my heart.  I kissed her forehead and promised I was just going to the bathroom, a certain clarity settling into my thoughts. She didn’t love me or need me less than she did Daddy. The fact was, she loved and needed both of us. The nature of his job required him to be out of the house for longer durations than me, which meant that she was far more likely to ask for him in times of stress. You don’t ask for stuff that you already have, so my being the ever present thorn in her side just meant that she took for granted that I’d be there. She hadn’t been asking for Daddy instead, she’d been asking for Daddy too.

I felt like a petty little moron for getting so butt hurt over it, but as I watched her sleep while clutching her blankie I was a happy, petty little moron. It was clear that the assumption was I’d be there to take care of things when everything went to hell in a hand basket. She felt confident that I would be there for her. I fell asleep myself, knowing that at least in this, I’d done something exactly right.