For anyone who may think Mother’s Day is just another “Hallmark Holiday”; who grumbles about having to spend their precious Sunday with Mom; who mindlessly sputters, “Every day is Mother’s Day”; let me describe what’s happening in Jess’s house at midnight on May 10.
I am laying on one of two twin beds pushed together in M.’s room, wide awake typing this post on my iPhone because I left my iPad at work while rushing to get home to my M. who had two teeth pulled today.
Why two twin beds? Because M. isn’t a consistent sleeper. Yep, he’ll be eight next month. EIGHT. Eight years of wondering how much sleep I’ll be blessed with. Seven of those years I was up every night at some point or other. For four of those years I can honestly say I slept no more than four to five hours a night, sometimes in fifteen-minute increments.
But I digress… Where were we? Oh right, the twin beds. See, the “original plan” (you know the plan I mean… it’s the one when you are pregnant with number two where you assume numbers 1 and 2 will be BFFs and 2 will typically develop and, um, sleep) was for JC and M. to share a room. M. being a vampire blew that plan apart. JC now takes residence in another room with its own bed, leaving an extra twin–my twin–in M.’s room. Somewhere in year five or six, my mother in law came up with the idea to push the beds together so I could get some sleep, instead of me being crammed in one twin with M.
Judge if you must, but remember I am old, I have a full time job, and I need sleep. By Year Five of having Edward Cullen for a son (Twilight reference– Stephenie Meyers’s vampires don’t sleep), I would have sold my soul to the Devil for an extra hour of shut eye. Child psychology and expert opinions can go screw at 3 a.m. on a work night.
Digressing, I know. Back to M.
Yesterday’s note from M.’s teacher mentioned a “stomach bug.” Good thing M. didn’t catch that one!, I told myself.
Wrong! He caught it. Poor kid has been throwing up all night.
So I am on M.’s twin, on the plastic mattress cover, with a towel for a pillow and the annoying guardrail next to me, while M. sleeps restlessly next to me, alternating between shivering and sweating, on the last clean set of sheets (which are covered with towels that he somehow manages to miss while heaving).
The bathtub in his bathroom (yep, he has his own bathroom– our town home has 3.5 baths– which makes a great excuse for a cleaning lady) is full of germ-laden, festering laundry. Sheets, blankets, towels, clothes, pajamas. Should be a fun day tomorrow!
Still, as I lay here uncomfortable and overly tired, wondering if I will be fired from my job for calling out tomorrow and wondering how I will get my iPad for the weekend since I left it in my unlocked office, and wondering if I can reschedule everything we were supposed to do tomorrow, and dreading laundry, and wondering when JC will catch the bug, if I had one wish granted to me right now I would wish for M. to feel better. That is really all I want from life at this moment. The other stuff is just distraction.
Your Mom does a lot for you. Even if you don’t realize it. Even if you think she doesn’t do much now for you, at some point she did. At some point she stayed up all night watching you, her sick child, sleep to make sure you were okay. Maybe she even spent the next day doing craploads of laundry.
Wish your Mom a Happy Mother’s Day this weekend. And wish me luck as I battle The Stomach Bug of May 2013.
Waiting on a Word 
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