And the moral of the story is…
There’s no real mystery about the origins of my abysmal bedside manner: it is directly descended from my mother, The Gaydi Project.
Getting sick when I was growing up was a risky proposition because I wasn’t allowed to be ill for very long. I would be given a certain amount of time to actually be sick, a time during which The Gaydi Project attended to my needs with doting motherlove and affection and homemade matzoh ball soup straight from the box! This allotted sick time, as I remember it, was a total of 24 hours, 17 minutes and 33 seconds. After that it was all, quit faking, up and at ‘em, make your own microwavable cuisine! (TGP should be stopping in shortly to defend herself and say that during these times, she let me be sick for at least 48-hours before throwing in the caretaker towel and that she only did this because she was employing that old reliable healing technique of reverse psychology.)
Fast forward to grown-up me and one of my personal challenges is to expand my ability to nurture. It’s something I consciously work on. In my defense, I’ll just say that Sam knew what he was getting when he bought the cow to go with all the free milk he’d been getting.
This past weekend proved to be a test of my nursemaid mettle. Sam—the laundry master, the head chef, the house-straightener extraoirdinaire—was down and out, so not only was I on Single Parent Duty but I was also taking care of my man who had, rather literally, just been kicked in the balls. It was like having two children and I don’t want two children, which explains the impetus for the nutsack injury. I just love when stories come full circle…
Thankfully, Ruby didn’t develop a post-infection infection or anything. You know, the kind that can cause a child to cough until she pukes on the aforementioned Single Parent. Repeatedly. And it’s not like the coughpuking kept the Little Buddha (and the only parent capable of lifting her) from sleeping. And it’s a good thing the Single Parent didn’t have to rush her back to see the doctor for the third time in one week. Because those kinds of demands—coupled with a laid-up husband understandably calling for attention of his own, lumped on top of washing clothes, cooking meals and cleaning the house? Well, that combo sets up one ugly bitch of a gauntlet for this girl. Even a broke-ass gambling addict convinced his jackpot is in the next hand wouldn’t put the deed to his house on my making it through to the other side.
But I went to my happy place and reminded myself—aloud, at moments—that everything is temporary. I pulled it together, dug deep, and pushed through my discomfort. I ignored my urge to tell Sam that his time was up and continued to be kind to him while doing this strange thing called multitasking. It was so terribly foreign but…somehow…I kinda liked it.
I did laundry (washed our only pair of working earbuds). I cooked several meals (reheated store bought delicacies). I brought peas to Sam in twenty minute intervals (until a fascinated Ruby took over this task). I did an endless stream of dishes (okay, this I did without help or complaint). I even potty trained la bébé (so, fine, I made Sam clean the pee off the floor…but he insisted!). I was feeling pretty damn competent by today, glad to have made it this far since Friday without abdicating too many responsibilities, ruining too many electronic items, or flying into spoiled-bitch-mode on my ailing husband.
And when Sam relayed this information to The Gaydi Project tonight, when he told her quite supportively of all the things I’d been doing, she said to him, “If she keeps it up, Ruby is going to start calling her ‘Dad.’”
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