Annoying
Orange
As I kneel on the cold marble floor of
my bathroom, the stick of the needs-to-be-cleaned toilet in my face helps the
nausea culminate. It has crept from my stomach, up my throat and down to my
arms and the tops of my feet. My hands feel nauseous. My feet feel nauseous.
My mouth fills with saliva, signaling
the arrival of my emesis guest. I am about to spew all I have eaten for the day
plus a bonus of pepsin, gastric juice and hydrochloric acid to burn my skin and
eat away at my teeth. The same chemical that can eat through iron is about to
come out of my body.
My mind flashes in an instant, what
could possibly be in my stomach still from the day since it is now 2:30am,
always the perfect time to vomit. I think: granolabarpastawithsauceandbread –
none of those are too terrible…and as I wretch, it literally hits me in the
back of my nose – where is that anyway? -
the orange I had as a snack before going to bed, before knowing a virus
had made it’s sticky and disgusting way past my body’s awesome, but seemingly
overtaxed, defenses.
I happily chewed and sucked on said
orange, thinking how yummy and juicy it was, as I pondered having a second and
with toilet water splashing me in the face, am glad I didn’t.
Chunks of orange strike my sinuses,
bounce off my teeth and dump into the toilet. The feeling of chunkiness is
nothing compared to the terrible acrid acid that accompanies it, trying to take
pieces of my skin with it. The taste is severe. The pain is great. It feels
like I’ve swallowed acid – and except for the traveling direction – I have.
When I am finally done heaving up what this
round will bring, for there is more to come, I stand at the sink to wash my
mouth out. The water tastes sickly sweet, like lavender and sugar. I nearly gag
again from disgusting sweetness. I even risk eating a tums to try and dislodge
the acid from my throat.
You have won this round, o virus, but in the
end, I will vanquish you.
Boys are…
Boys are awesome. Boys are fun. Boys make wrinkles and mud and
messes and holes. Boys wrestle. Boys play with the dog. Boys put away the
dishes, go to school and cut the grass. Boys leave their shoes in the middle of
the floor. Boys leave toothpaste in the sink. Boys hold open doors for their
moms, say please and thank you and report wrong doings. Boys get dirty. Boys
never put out their laundry. Boys leave crumbs on the counter, homework on the
table and handprints on my heart. Boys are kind. Boys are generous. Boys think
of their brother at a party, call when their brother is sick and attack with
hugs on the play ground when they meet. Boys are tough. Boys are smart. Boys
beat each other up, read to each other and hug each other good night. Boys are
shy. Boys are boisterous. Boys annoy their mom and their teacher, but not their
Om. Boys love dogs. Boys love ice cream. Boys like carrots and broccoli and
salad. Boys speak spy language. Boys don’t speak mom language. Boys say every
day how much they love mom and Penny and dad each other. Boys are love.
Finger
As I sit in the emergency room with my
8-year-old son, I think of how I came to be sitting here, surrounded in
sterility and bright colors. Devin’s finger is broken. We knew that right away.
But what is there to do about a broken finger? About as much as a broken toe.
He had fallen off of a stool while washing his hands and landed with his finger
under the fridge. I think it became broken when he tried to get up without
checking his position. In any case, it wasn’t a bad break, just a crack. We splinted
it with popsicle sticks and tape and went on with our day, which happened to be
date-day. One-on-one time with either mom or dad. Devin chose me J It may have actually been the reason why we
didn’t make it to the emergency room until 10pm.
We enjoyed our date: Book shopping, riding
the carousel, cruising through the shoe store and finally, a pumpkin scone with
hot chocolate at Starbucks. A typical “date.” Afterwards, we went back home,
connected with brother and dad, got some dinner and started getting ready for
bed. After the shower, came the tears.
So now, we are waiting. Devin with tears
and grimaces, me with a worry-line permanently etched into the center of my forehead.
I try to cheer him, to soothe him. The pain has become too great.
We are given a smaller and even more
sterile room to sit in. One with paper on the mattress and pillow, a single
piece of entertainment, a very sorry toy, to keep us occupied. Give him credit…he
tries to stay entertained and keep his mind off the pain, but can not. Finally
a nurse comes in and takes us to xray. Yep. It’s broken. As if there was some
kind of question.
As we are waiting for the doctor to come
back in, for she had visited us briefly, Devin starts to get this look of panic
on his face. He suddenly starts crying a gasping and crawling into my lap.
Having no ide what had changed, I try to calm him and figure out what is wrong.
Choking and sputtering, he finally gets out his question: “Are they going to
cut it off?”
In the span of less than one second, I realized
where the question comes from. His whole life – and really, mine too, for my
folks told me the same thing – whenever he hurt himself a little, a scratch or
a poke or a bit of blood, I would distract him by asking if we should cut it
off. “Mom! I scratched my arm! It’s bleeding!!” “Should we cut it off?” “uh,
no.” “go play then” and off he would go, hurt forgotten.
Now I realized, he thought we would really
cut off his finger! Doc came back in, gave stronger kid pain meds and a real
splint. We went home and to bed. To this day, I have not asked a child if we
should cut off anything that hurts.
Lover
I push the
hair of my loved one,
my lover,
off my face.
I sit up and
take a breath in the
dark.
I smell him,
our oneness.
I sigh and
leave our brief nest,
wishing to prolong
our contact.
Mud
Hmmm. What to do with a wheelbarrow full
of accidental mud. Mud created from left over dirt and a few days of rain. I
think I will just dump it over by the fence near the garden. I walk 50 steps
with the wheelbarrow back to the middle of the yard to wash it out and I hear
the seven children in my yard squealing and giggling. I turn to see what has
happened. They have found the mud. The slurry, gloppy dark brown mud. The pond
of mud that I have just dumped. It took less than 30 seconds for all seven boys
and girls, ages 3 to 8, to find it.
I didn’t know children were so attracted
to mud. They did not just run over to look at it, but got up to their elbows,
their knees, in it. It covered their clothes and their hair. It was in their
ears.
Ok. Easy. I’ll just get out the hose and
wash them all down. It’s a nice warm day. They might even like getting sprayed
with the hose. Ring! Ring! Oh, the
phone. Hi, Aimee. Oh. You’re just down the road? Um, ok. Get the girls ready,
you’re kind of in a hurry? Well, see, there’s this mud… And you just bought a
new car that you’re driving right now?...No, I’ll just strip them down if
that’s ok with you…Uh huh. See you soon. Sorry…
Well. One at a time. That will work. I’ll
just do mine first so they know what’s coming. Bean! Come here please! Get
undressed (I’m four. I don’t care if I’m naked or not. It will be fun to have
permission to have no clothes on…), I’m going to hose the mud off your legs and
arms. None got under your clothes. Spray,
spray, spray… Alright, Gracie. Your turn. Let’s get off your…Oh!! Hi,
Aimee!! That was so fast! Your new car must be a race car.
I can see my friend is upset, but she is
holding a brave face. She starts to get her girls out of their clothes. More
squealing. From a boy. My boy. I look over. He is covered in mud. Not just up
to the knees and elbows. Covered. In. Mud. Even his little butt crack is filled
in. Was there so much mud over there?
Aimee laughs. This has helped her face her
dilemma of dirty-girls-new-car. How am I going to get all that mud off/out of
my child?
Ocean
I’m floating in a haze of
swirling sand and bubble-flecked, raging water. I realize I’m running out of
oxygen, drowning and I feel peaceful, accepting of the blue heaven surrounding
me. Then as my face scrapes the bottom
of the ocean, the punishing ocean, I realize, I’m drowning and if I don’t get
air immediately, I will likely die in this torrent of serenity.
I
can see the surface, for the sun is shining wondrously around me in shafts and
beams. Not even the violent movement of a thousand gallons of water can detour
their paths. I go toward the light (air) with
weakening strokes and break the surface, dragging air into my lungs. I am hit
again and again by the waves, I find myself face down in the sand at the bottom
of the ocean, the unforgiving ocean.
I’m tossed through the water like a
dog tosses a squirrel before ripping it to shreds. Pieces of shells, seaweed,
sand, salt flow and bob past and around me. Are my eyes open? They must be.
They are gritty and painful. Not as painful as no air. I’m thinking of the
mistake I made in turning my back against the ocean, the indeferential ocean.
I’m pushed, again, toward the
shoreline. The sand grabs at my arms, my hair, my face pulls my swimsuit off
me. Sand gets into every space of me. In my ears, my eyes, my nose, my…
Finally, the ocean, the hungry ocean, lets go of me, disgorges me. Air comes in
a sweet and hacking breath. I can’t believe everyone on the beach sees my
nakedness. The ocean, the thieving ocean, has stolen my swimsuit.
Ode
to Boys
When my boys are gone, I miss them. If
they’re gone for an hour, a day, a week, or more, I miss them. I miss them when
they’re not following directions. I miss them when they are angry and when they
can’t keep their rooms clean. I miss them when they’re chasing the dog. When
they are rolling on the floor laughing with each other, I miss them. I miss
them when I’m in class and when I’m at school. When they got to their dad’s,
their Nan’s or across the street for an hour, I miss them. When they won’t
leave me alone in the bathroom, when I trip on their dirty clothes and when I
find Legos in the show and cut my foot, I miss them. When I need a break, I
miss them. When they are doing chores, I miss them. When I want so badly for
peace and quiet and some time to myself, I miss them.
My boys take up so much of my heart, my
mind, my time, my energy, my thoughts. They make me laugh, cry, yell, they make
me happy, sad, angry, frustrated and worried. They have given me all the wrinkles
on my face and the grey hairs on my head. They are the cause for my extra
lumpiness and the line between my eyes. They fill my eyes and ears, my arms and
my heart. They are my soul and for all of these things, EVERY SINGLE ONE, I
love them.
The
Grapejuice story
Grape juice spews from my sister’s
mouth as she leans out the window letting a guffawing laughter chase it. Her
long blonde hair is flying out in front of her face as we speed along some back
road full of twists. If there were cars on the road in either direction, they
probably got sprayed. I can imagine them standing, scratching heir heads
puzzling over the purple spatters.
 |
| My sister's version |
As the grape juice escaped, it splatted
against the side of our trying-to-be white car. It would have sounded like a
gush of water falling suddenly from a bridge overpass onto a windshield. But
there was no sound for us. From within the cabin, the loudest possible version
of Conway Twitty or Ronnie Milsap pounded against our ears making any other
sound drown.
I have not idea what we were laughing
at. With the music up so high, likely we were just making faces, trying to make
each other do exactly what happened.
When we eventually paused in the
torture of our dad’s aimless and thunderous driving, we were still giggling.
Covering the back half of the car was a Rorschach inkblot of sticky purple
grape juice. My dad became one of the imagined
scratching-his-head-and-wondering-what-happened. When we saw the look on his face
– and realized we weren’t in trouble for it – for, in truth, dad had no idea
what happened, we wrapped our 7- and 10-year-old stick arms around each other
to keep from collapsing on the ground with laughter.
Mom just got out the camp stove and
made lunch.
Vomit
Cracker (inspired by Annoying Orange)
I popped the delicious-looking
sample in my mouth without even bothering to see what was actually there.
Cracker, check. Tomato, check. Some kind of spread, check. All very benign. As
I make my first crunch on the crispness of the cracker, my expression changes
from, “Ha! Free sample!” to “wtf is this?”
Had someone previously and thinly
vomited on my cracker, miraculously avoiding all the surrounding crackers? Was
my tomato slice the horrendously squishy and near-to-falling-apart-rotten that
its’ neighbor was not?
I look around for the garbage can
that usually accompanies a sample area: A place for toothpicks, napkins those
miniature plastic spoons…but no! No receptacle in sight! Ok, a napkin then –
umm, also a no-go. The crackers were already prepared and on a tray. I had
grabbed one and started to walk away. I am now two steps from the
sample-of-vomit peddler, eyes watering, gagging and looking wildly, madly
around for somewhere to spit out this vile substance that is not the
floor or my un-napkined hand.
By the third step, I realize I am
going to have to swallow this vile, emesis-covered cracker.
The following is a scan of a few pages of the book I created.
There are around 20 more pages!
Annoying Orange
Boys
Finger
Lover
Ocean
Ode to Boys
The Grapejuice Story
Vomit Cracker
If you made it to the bottom, thanks so much for looking! I have learned so much in this class, but mostly, just how to write!
Deb
