We now return to our regularly scheduled programming that was briefly interrupted by Attack of the Vomit-Spewing Zombies. My kids got sick, guys, and I couldn’t find time to write. But this is how you know this blog is for real: inconsistent quality and quantity of posts, blurry pictures of my kids and tea rings on your computer screen.
It started with a string of messages left both on the answering machine at home and on my cell phone’s voice mail. Well, I guess it really started with the text message I got from Ed, because who can be bothered to check voice messages anymore? And why is it that I never miss a call from some other guy’s collection agent, but the one time the school calls my phone goes into silent mode? But I digress. The messages (all of them) said that Colum had been throwing up in his classroom and asked that I bring him home.
So I wrestled the girls back into the coats and boots we just took off and went to get him. I marched right into the office, looked around, but couldn’t see him. “He’s out in the hallway,” the secretary said. And there he was, slumped over on a re-purposed church pew with an industrial-sized garbage can strategically placed within heaving distance.
Flashback to 1990! I was in the sixth grade and in the midst of ultra-serious, private Catholic school, mid-term exams. My teacher reluctantly sent me to the office to call my parents when I insisted that I was sick. Walking through the hall, I realized I wasn’t going to make it home. I wasn’t even going to make it to the nearest bathroom. I bee lined it for a garbage can, emptied the contents of my virus-riddled stomach and then continued to the office.
The secretary was wary. Was I really sick during the exam period? Wasn’t that just a little too convenient? Then she got called out into the hallway. “Rebecca, did you throw up in a garbage can?” she asked when she got back. I nodded and tried very hard to blend in with the office furniture. “Why didn’t you go to the bathroom?” She was relentless. “I, er, didn’t have time?”
And there I sat in a miserable heap until they were able to reach my dad (which was no small feat in the mesozoic pre-cell phone era) and he came to pick me up. But at least they knew I wasn’t faking.
My poor boy. The endless wait in an institutional corridor, the taste of your own vomit lingering in your mouth: I know it well. I collected him and his school bag while his teacher gave me instructions on laundering his coat and his uniform, letting him rest and giving him lots of fluid such as apple juice and chicken broth. I assume that’s because he thinks I am a teenaged mother who doesn’t know any better. It’s very flattering.
We went home to rest and while Colum was still sick, he didn’t vomit anymore. Irene was also under the weather but mostly managed to avoid throwing up. Mary, on the other hand, was in great spirits, had tons of energy and a ravenous appetite. She would demand snacks and run around and play and then calmly puke in the middle of the floor every couple hours. I won’t even tell you about how I let her fuss for a couple minutes at nap time only to discover she had “settled down for her nap” in a pool of her own vomit. For shame.