Plight of the Mother

On Friday night, Sam and I had some one-on-one time while Annie was away playing with a friend.  I asked my son what he wanted to do, and he said he wanted to play pretend with me.  I was the doctor, and he was the dad.  He had two babies, Flowers and Forty-One.  I had a doctor kit filled with Legos.  I don’t often have time to sit and play with my kids like this, but I relish in these moments because children's play is a window into their minds, and I get to experience the world from their perspective.  Let me tell you, Daddy Sam was adorable.  He was so tender and loving to Flowers and Forty-One.  Both kids were very sickly and constantly throwing up, but when I (the doctor) tried to help take care of them, Daddy Sam would brush me away and say, “No.  I know how to take care of my sick babies.”  So, I sat on the couch and watched him nurture for the rest of the night, marveling at his perception of what I do day-in and day-out.  What I learned was Sam thinks being a parent is cleaning up a lot of puke and putting drops in all the facial orifices.  And, I mean, he’s not wrong.

This was a tough week for me.  That sweet, nurturing boy has been struggling with some health issues that doctors can’t seem to explain.  Sometimes it means staying up with him all night while he writhes in pain and begs me to make the hurting stop.  Sometimes it’s rubbing lotion all over his entire hive and blister-cover body.  Sometimes it’s cleaning up spontaneous vomit that arrives without other symptoms that might give a clue to the cause.   But this week, after two bad nights in a row, I decided to have Sam tested for allergies, hoping to find what was triggering these episodes.  In a bittersweet turn of events, he tested negative for everything.  It was a relief not to have to take away his favorite foods or drastically change his lifestyle, but it was also frustrating.  These results have left us in the dark, still scrambling for answers as we try to keep this boy healthy.

While these medical issues have been a part of my life as long as Sam has been in it, it felt insurmountably difficult this week because of that poignant moment watching my son clean up pretend vomit off the chin of his “baby.”  I feel incredibly helpless.  I have tried so many things to make Sam’s life more comfortable and had so little success that the constant maintenance of his health has become the cornerstone of Sam’s vision of adulthood.  To cope with my perceived ineptitude, I think I overcompensate by trying to help others.  I try to lift them when they are down, make them laugh, fill their bellies with delicious things, and flood them with hope and positivity.  I lay awake with racing thoughts of Who can I help?  Where can I volunteer?  How can I make someone’s world better?  But I love too deeply sometimes, and I take on other people’s impossible hurts only to realize that I am just as helpless curing their pain as I am curing my son.

Perhaps this is just the plight of the mother.