be-musings

I was a self-titled "Miss Priss" as a child. When we moved from Alberta to BC, we moved to a very arid region that in the eye of a 10 year old girl seemed to have only dirt. We played baseball in the dirt, instead of a grassy diamond as I was accustomed to in Cold Lake. We rode bikes with our cousins, which was a new experience. And with so many dirt-filled hills around and no experience, inevitably I fell during every bike ride that first summer, and pushed my bike home while crying. I still remember the pain of skinned flesh. Oh come on...you can feel it too.
So, it is with this background that, many years later I became a mother. When Matthew arrived he was 8 months old, sleeping through the night, eating mush, keeping all his food in his stomach, and newly crawling. Rarely was he ever sick with the flu. Well, okay, when he was just under 1 year old he was throwing up fluid alot one morning. Instead of changing the sheets every 30 minutes in the wee hours, I just kept repositioning him in the crib so that he was on a dry spot. How much could a little baby move around anyway? Now don't criticize - I'm sure all you parents have done something weird like that!
One day when Matthew was about 2 years old he was feeling sick. While I was tending him he sat on the edge of his bed, and within 2 seconds he began to hurl. This was a defining moment for me. It was a test of my response and my brilliance as a mom. As the chunky stuff reached the top of his throat I thought "Not on the carpet!!!!" and as the vomit left his body I instinctively cupped my hands under his bent head...in order to catch the puke. As the warm refuse filled my hands I wondered what I had done and bemoaned how far I had suddenly come from Miss Priss. I ran to the bathroom to clean my hands and then cleaned up my little boy.
Oh, parenthood. How we change in the twinkling of an eye...or the reflex of a child's gag.