Hellobee

Illness. How many times have I heard parents utter the words, “All bets are off,” when it comes to kids being sick? More than I can count, honestly. Because it’s true. When we get sick, things aren’t normal. Meals go uneaten. We may feel like sleeping all day long, and spend the night shivering and tossing. We’re more irritable. We just need more. Which is… normal. But not fun. And as a parent, we often need to pull way more weight than normal, and at stranger hours, to help our small people feel better. It’s a great reason to all of a sudden start working the graveyard shift again (assuming you were ever off in the first place), and we can at least take some solace in knowing that it won’t last forever, but, in the moment, there is also a sensation a little like free-fall; how on earth will we ever get from this back to normal?

It broke my heart to see my dynamo so subdued– but even at her most feverish, she would still pause to say, “Daddy, you’re a sweet daddy for bringing Lorelei water.”

If you know me, you know I am a relaxed person. Perhaps bordering on catatonia. About a week ago, the mailman came to our house just after I had nursed Lorelei down for her afternoon nap. Small dog starts barking. Then he starts yowling and yipping as though he has been given the personal task of waking the entire western world. I start to frantically run scenarios in my head: Stay sitting on the sofa? Dog keeps barking, mailman still there. That won’t work. Take her upstairs? Maybe. I leap off the sofa and sprint to the door. I glance at the mailman with a look in my eye that I hope conveys the gravity of the situation. “Shhh.” It says. “Be still. Baby sleeping. Dog barking. Leave the package… and go.”

Apparently something was lost in translation, however, because he interprets my look to mean, “Ring doorbell several times, smile, and wave.” I man-handle Lorelei up the stairs, deposit her, wailing, on her floorbed, and run back to answer the door. Why, for the love of all that is holy, can this man not leave the package inside our door, quietly, the way he does every single fricking other day he delivers a package? By the time we are done, and I have executed several mental fantasies of hitting him repeatedly with a package, or slamming the door on his foot (all while smiling politely and wishing he would just please for goodness sake hurry up and leave already) I tell him, “My daughter is crying. She just went down for nap. Sorry, I have to run.” Also, I shoot him a look in which I play, in slow-motion, all of my brutal mailman abuse fantasies. Knowing him, he reads the look as, “Next time baby is sleeping, ring my doorbell again and I will invite you in for freshly baked cookies.” By the time he had finally gone, it was too late. The nap was over. I took a deep breath and just embraced it. I had a happy kid. Yes, sure, she was awake, but she was happy. So, to celebrate the nap that wasn’t, we dumped out a giant bucket of dollhouse stuff, found the puppies and the litterbox, and all was zen.

It’s hard sometimes to not want to control every little aspect of the day. I’m not a huge scheduler, by any means, but I do like to have some good, old-fashioned centerpieces to my day. Ones that do not get moved around except by Act of God. We wake up around the same time. We have breakfast first. We play. We have lunch. We nap. Times are inspired by Lorelei’s biorhythm, but are approximately the same each day. If she were regularly refusing her afternoon nap, we’d revamp the schedule. But if it works, we do it. Most kids really seem to appreciate having some routines they can rely on to act as anchors for the rest of the day. It’s soothing to know what to expect. Maybe that’s why the chaos inspired by illness feels so unsettling– those anchors still exist, but they have been pulled up and everything is adrift. Naps may happen in the morning. A nap at 7pm might turn into a bedtime at midnight. Naps could easily run through meals, and a later meal might well be refused in favor of nursing on the sofa. Napping might happen only in mama’s arms; something that hasn’t happened that way in months and months.

It’s okay to be adrift sometimes. If I’m sick and want to take a nap, I do it. I don’t worry about anyone waking me up so I can adhere to a schedule. I listen to what my body is telling me will help me feel better faster. Today as I was holding my sleeping and feverish toddler for her second nap of the day at 6pm while Mr. T fretted about whether or not he should bring me food or invite me to sit at the table, it struck me how much it was like having a newborn all over again. Nothing was regular. Nothing was predictable. All that existed were needs. A need to sleep. To be held. To eat a little bit. To nurse. To drink some water. Lorelei, who has been in underwear for several weeks now insisted one afternoon that she was a baby and didn’t use the white potty anymore.

Sure, I had moments of panic. I had moments where I saw all of the months of growing and maturing erased like so much chalk after a good rainstorm. I allowed myself the sobering thought that maybe this was the new normal. It’s like riding a bike, though. If you know how to do it, and you put some training wheels back on for a day or two, or even a couple of weeks, it doesn’t all just disappear down some black hole never to return. You will be able to do it again. So even though our schedule is as well and truly dead as any good schedule could possibly be, I don’t worry too much when I’m holding her. I don’t worry too much when she naps all morning, and is up at midnight. If she wants me to hold her for every nap, I take a few minutes (in-between obsessing over whether or not her fever is too high) to smooth her hair from her forehead and kiss her nose. Schedules are fine, but today she is my baby again. And we all need to be someone’s baby sometimes.