The Essence

Living and growing a family in the North awards you with a real and tangible connection to the land. As a mother of 5 and as a home baker and wannabe chef, it is this connection that seeps into everything - motherhood, food, harvesting, and experiencing the very heartbeat of the bit of earth that sustains us.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Warning: Major Gross Factor


Early this morning, around 3am, Dustin barfed. Once downstairs all over the bathroom floor, and once upstairs. He tried to catch it in his hands. I wanted to be sympathetic, I wanted to be a comforting, nurturing mother, but isn't 13 old enough to clean up your own vomit? Shouldn't a 13 year old be able to make it to the toilet bowl? I can handle grossness, believe me, after 4 children I've had to deal with stuff a lot of kidless people couldn't even imagine. I can handle poop and snot and blood and pee and spit and curdled milk even, but I don't do barf. Just a hint of the smell, and I start to lose it. So this morning I kicked T.J out of bed to go see to his son. Later as I bleached away, I remembered a pretty great barf story back when Dustin was about 3 years old.


One night he woke up crying and I burst into his room and was hit by that terrible smell that stopped me dead in my tracks. My little guy was hollering and reaching out for me, and I had to turn, gagging and pulling my shirt over my nose, back out of the room to wake T.J. He went in and discoverd a pool of vomit smack in the middle of Dustin's bedspread. He picked up our little boy, held him at arm's reach, and headed for the bathroom where he stuck him in the bathtub and turned the shower on. He couldn't just stuff the comforter in the washing machine, as there were chunks of partly digested food floating around the rest of my son's stomach contents. T.J hatched a plan, and he found me hiding under my covers and convinced me to help him carry it out.

We had a second floor deck off our bedroom, and he wanted me to grab 2 corners of Dustin's comforter while he grabbed the other 2 sides. We were going to carry the puke this way, without spilling, to the door and throw the whole thing off the deck. Lovely.

Well, because I was holding 2 sides of the comforter, I couldn't let go to cover my nose because it would spill all over the floor. That smell was wafting up, I swear I could see it steaming. I lost it. Half way from Dustin's bedroom to the deck door, I couldn't hold it back anymore and I vomited right into the middle of the comforter, on top of what was already there. T.J was yelling, "GO GO GO GO GO!", and we burst onto the deck and hurled the whole disgusting thing out into the front yard where it landed with a splat onto the snow. T.J went to Dustin, who was still standing in the shower with all his jammies on, hollering. I went back to bed. The next day, we looked out the window and the birds were enjoying breakfast out on the comforter, which was now frozen into the snow. Disgusting.

2 comments:

  1. I love it, Heather! It brings back some juicy stories of my days with little kids. `

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  2. haha Heather you rock. And just a heads up 13 is not old enough to clean up puke. that is why when i was that age i threw up in my parents closet and in a pocket door...oopsie. I think I may end up being one of those moms that cant handle puke either. anyways just wanted to comment and say hi lol

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