It’s good for parents to have their own Super Hero, one who is there just at the stroke of, “I can’t possibly do all of this myself! I need help!” Mine, for example, cooks and cleans when I get home from work late and still am supposed to make dinner for J, his dad and myself. And after being a little behind on my Deep Spring Cleaning (approx. 4 years behind) she pitched in yesterday to make the stovetop NOT look like a shot from the nightly news segment on “Children Being Raised In Squalor.”
All day while I was watching J. and his eye, swollen and purple underneath, with a white bean-sized pocket of pus just under the skin with his Second Annual August Periorbital Infection, my Super Hero eased my mind by disinfecting the kitchen. Boy, is she good. Baking soda and old toothbrushes (she ain’t sceared to git down like dat!) to bleach water and rags, scraping layers off the stovetop with the end of a metal spoon (4 YEARS…) and getting stuff out of the cracks behind the sink that I can’t even see – she was at it from 9:30am till almost 4pm. Meanwhile I was putting warm compresses on J’s eye every 2 hours to encourage the white bean to loosen up and leave my son alone.
It didn’t. I was great at staying calm yet steadfast that we do those compresses and take those prescription meds. Last year the offending germ causing it was MRSA. Not to be taken lightly. We were at the stage where most people would have been in the ER; but my doctor worked overtime, giving him highly potent antibiotics in her office, every day, as injections. Heavy duty, and hard on J, but it kept him out of the hospital.
This time she wasn’t playing around: she said if it didn’t respond to the proper antibiotics quickly, or if it appeared to be making his whole body sick ie a fever or just looking sick, it’d be time to go straight to the ER. Today I woke up disappointed to see the pocket under the eye had not opened to drain during the night, and I started thinking if it doesn’t pop today, then tomorrow we go to Children’s Memorial. I’d told the doctor that if it was under MY eye, I’d have poked it with a clean needle by now to drain it. But with J the only way is the warm compresses, maybe 5 times a day she said. By noon today I’d gone to Hourly’s. And at 2pm we got some oozing. And a little more each hour. Relief. I wanted a more dramatic moment with the whole big white bean-like blob appearing at once on the compress, maybe from a little pressing on my part. But J. isn’t me. He’s like his dad, who almost fainted when I had my amniocentesis in 2002. J. doesn’t complain of pain a lot, but he sure does not like being poked or “worked on.” So it’s taking longer than I wanted to clean this thing out.
Meanwhile, the kitchen sparkles and we experienced a minimum of toxic fumes. It, unlike the rest of us over here, is clean and renewed and sanitized. Perfect. When I cooked Chinese eggplant and bean pods in brown sauce over noodles tonight, I must have wiped that stove every two minutes.
Not that it is hard to summon my Super Hero, it isn’t really. It’s just that she has a pit bull perseverance that makes it hard for me to relax and be tranquil in the moment. So I’m trying to practice letting her come out to play Oya, my favorite Creator/Destroyer goddess, only when needed. So that the rest of the time, I can feel tender and strong, vulnerable but competent and raise my son without one adventure after another.
I am putting him into his bath now, sprinkling bentonite clay in the water, wondering how it will be to return to work tomorrow, and if I’ll feel nervous that Darius so generously offered to take off a day to care for J, since I’ve had no other life since I picked J. up from his house at 3:15pm Saturday. Wondering tonight about how this illness (with the scary monster face J. didn’t ever want to have, but has today for the second time) will effect the separation/attachment issues he struggles with already. It’s so much to handle already. Paying 75% of my income just for rent. Negotiating visitation with my ex. Trying to do more than just what is expected of us “special parents.” Trying to help his daddy grow up even half as fast as J. Making sure I see how J. is raising ME as much as I’m raising HIM.
If I say it’s too much, though, SHE’LL show up, kick some kitchen butt and save the day. Which usually works out just fine. But in my dreams I don’t need Super Heros. I fly, I eat, I get scared and run, then find a high perch to sit on and watch the rest of the world spin for a change.
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2 comments:
Yikes! I hope J.'s eye is doing better today. He sounds like a trooper though. And I'm glad you have your Super Hero. If only we could clone them and ourselves, this world would spin a whole lot smoother!
Christina, I heard Beyonce tell a story about meeting Anita Baker backstage at some concert; Beyonce says she's so exhausted that she can't imagine how she'll be able to go out there to perform soon, and Anita says, "Don't worry -- SHE'LL take over!"
That's the SuperHero I'm talking about. Anita Baker's response was really profound to me. It speaks to our often having more inner resources than seems possible. More than we realize. And we can't expect them to show up every day all day. But it is there at the lowest, hardest times.
And sometimes it is just the voice you have that reaches out to someone else to say, "I really need your help right now, and so you WILL do this for me."
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