Without Mommy

To my son Tommy,

I have perpetuated the bumbling father stereotype before.  For the most part this is an act played by an evil genius used for my nefarious purpose to lower people's (mommy included) expectations and to avoid work. Drop and break a couple dishes, no one asks you to do dishes anymore.  Get the picture?  To be certain, many fathers do this and I risk losing my "man license" by exposing the secret that our ineptitude is an elaborate scheme.  Occasionally though I do find myself in uncharted territory and not as confident in my fatherly abilities but like Gunnery Sergeant Highway says we "Improvise. Adapt. Overcome."

It is just you and me today.  Your mommy is still in the hospital and will be for the next week or more.  The Baltimore weather forecasters are all calling for snow in various amounts which, when they can't agree, most likely means an impending blizzard.  When you woke up this morning, you complained of a tummy ache, an area of life that usually falls to the soon to be nurse in our life, aka Mommy!

I checked the normal culprits.  No fever.  You don't have to poop, or so you say.  Can't even get you to eat, in case it is lack of food that is causing tummy pain.  So what is a father to do?  Well dishes and clean up the house of course.  And blog of course.

I learned, from watching the older relatives in my life, that when you don't know what to do in any situation, you do what you know how to do.  When grief or sorrow would enter our lives when I was a child, I would see people start cleaning and/or start baking and/or start cooking and/or do fix up projects and /or clean out cars and other auto maintenance and/or even pull out a deck of cards for a pinochle game.  It confounded me in my youth and seemed such an unnatural response.  So and so is sick so lets clean the living room.  So and so just passed so time to bake a pie.  So and so is heart broken so let me make sure the oil is changed on the car.

Now I know, it is a healthy combination of denial and the attempt to not feel useless.  Your tummy might be upset, and I wish I could magically make it feel better but I can't.  So at least the dishwasher is run and the kitchen sink sanitized with Lysol.  I wish I could cheer you up, but a stomach ache is going to trump any direct attempts.  So at least you will have a clean living room to look at.  Dirty dishes and general disarray contribute to bad feelings in both of us, so why not fix or do what I know I can do.  I wish I could convince you how important it is to poop and/or eat right now but at least it will be documented and maybe stop you from moving from inept father to "overreacting time to run to the hospital for a simple tummy ache" father sometime in the future.

Of course as I was writing this blog, and expounding on the virtues of a good BM to fix most things, you ran off to the bathroom for a potty.  You asked for privacy as you shut the door swearing to me it is only pee time.  A couple minutes later, from the bathroom I hear this, "Wow! Daddy come look at this big poopie!" Ahh, that's my boy!  Amazed at his own creations and always willing to share.  You are in much better spirits and perhaps we are passed this whole bellyache thing, and I know it is all due to me blogging, and straightening, and running the dishwasher.  It had nothing to do with nature and expelling the two foot brown demon from your body by way of the potty.  Nope, definitely the dishwasher.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

P.S.  It is a good thing that among the things I know how to do, among those things I have learned from my younger days, there exists the skills of catching puke with my hands and cleaning up vomit out of carpet and doing laundry.  Evidently the dishwasher was not the cure all I thought it would be.

Medieval Times

To my son Tommy,

We headed out to Medieval Times dinner and tournament to celebrate your cousin Ryan's birthday.  What started out as a great time quickly turned scary.

You and I are fighting the beginning of possible colds and I seriously debated scrapping the whole trip.  No fevers or anything just some nasal congestion.  So I decided we could suck it up and head out and that a minor sniffle wouldn't keep us from some fun.  In hindsight, my idea to cowboy up was more machismo than common sense.

We got there and were having a great time.  We were armed with an allergy free sandwich and thing of pasta.  We had your epi-pen (thanks to Aunt Deb bringing it down) in case you tried any new foods or came in contact with any allergy foods.  I didn't plan for the real culprit of the night.

The show started around 4:30 One second you were enthralled and engaged and sitting right next to me and yelling "HUZZAH!" with me.  Everyone else was just cheering normally so it was special that you and I were yelling a more theme appropriate cheer.  We were about an hour in to the show and then in a matter of seconds you went to lethargic, disengaged, and sleepy.  I immediately knew something wasn't right.  I tried to ascertain if you had ingested anything you shouldn't have and had my epi pen at the ready.  You scratched your throat and almost received an immediate medical injection.  Instead I nearly bulldozed over your Pop-pop as I had to get you into better light.  We headed out to the lobby.

In the lobby I noticed you didn't have the hives or swelling normally associated with eating food.  Plus we didn't have any food that you were allergic to and you didn't eat anything that I didn't bring.  An employee came by and asked us if we were alright.  I asked for a glass of water.  When he brought it back he asked if you had asthma and suggested the horses might have been a factor.  Duh, asthma.  Why didn't I think of that.  Horse dander and all the smoke and fog machines, why didn't it dawn on me?  Throw in the fact that you played outside in the cold air earlier and that is like a perfect storm for asthma.  Well now that you were out of the situation, things would get better right?

Since I am just a dad, I have two levels of medical care.  The "aww he's alright, shake it off boy" level and the "off to the hospital we go" level.  There really isn't much in between, either we do nothing or over react.  So I called your mom to let her know and to find out what to do as if she had some mommy super power to get a feeling of what is going on over a phone call.  After the phone call which just reassured me that I should use my own judgement, as long as it wasn't the unfair judgement that mommies everywhere can tell how sick their child is over the phone, we decided to wait it out in the lobby for a bit.  We hoped we could just wait it out till everyone came out and then head home.  Every time I decided it was time to go, you begged to wait. This lasted till about 6:15 when you and I both decided things were no longer getting better and it was time to go.

We hurried home fairly fast, just slow enough not to get in a car accident on the way but definitely with some speed.  Your mom had the nebulizer treatment readied for you and we hit you with some benadryl and a mask treatment and checked your oxygen levels and temp.  It turns out that I really would have been over-reacting if I had followed my instinct to take an early turn on the way home and head to the emergency room.  I guess I reacted with the appropriate amount of effort by getting you to your mommy.

Your mommy and I have a scary future with regards to raising you.  Between your food allergies and your asthma and everything else that is normal for little boys, we have plenty to worry about.  I pray I will be granted the necessary grace to know when and how to act with every medical problem that arises.  Right now I think I am going to ground and quarantine you and I, even from Mass tomorrow, just to make sure we get some rest and recovery.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

Sickness

To my son Tommy,

You came home Monday from school with a fever.  The doctor says it is just a cold and you should be fine in a couple days or a week at most.  We kept you home the last couple days.  Your fever broke that day but you have had little to no appetite and even water can upset your tummy.  Yesterday and the day before we only managed to get about six bites of food in you.  You are showing signs of life today, and your appetite is starting to return, but you aren't going back to school tomorrow either.

A sick child, to everyone else in the world, is no big deal, but to a parent it is totally different.  Kids get sick, it happens, but when it is your kid...  I know we shouldn't worry and you will recover but what I know and what we do are not in alignment.  Our world nearly stops with worry for you.  It is as if we hold our breath until you are well again and then we can finally breathe.  You might not see it because we don't want to fawn or fuss over you so much that you enjoy being sick, but we really want to grab you up in our arms and snuggle the illness out of you.  Here is hoping you get back to your normal healthy precocious self as soon as possible.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo