So it appears, my immune system has an uncanny ability to sense when I'm on vacation. Maybe it was the salty air, or the crisp citrusy white wine. Or, it could have been the fact that at some point in the week leading up to our vacation, I simply said, "I'm so excited to go away!" and by doing so, invited all of the surrounding germs to pack themselves away in my toiletry bag.
I'm betting that it might simply be that I have a three year old and an almost 20 month old.
Whatever the case, all I know is that for the past four years- as it pertains to vacations, all I have to do is show up, and my immune system shuts down.
So, in a state of something close to deja vu, I drove to the local Doctor's Care facility just up the road from our condo. The same one I've visited every other time we've been here. I pulled up in the parking lot, feeling more than a little bitter that I knew exactly where it was. It's the one right across from the Treasure Island Putt-Putt, with its dusty blue chairs, oatmeal-and-mauve colored walls, array of retirement magazines, and 11x14 prints of random medical pictures-- cross-sections of things like the urinary tract and an esophagus and god knows what else.
I walked in to find approximately four empty chairs and decided that the only thing worse than feeling bad is having to sit somewhere and feel bad in close proximity to other people who feel bad too. I twice scared the poor old lady to the right of me when I coughed, so I sat very still and wheezed and checked facebook and wondered if I looked as bad as I felt. I scanned the room and took a mental inventory: a young-ish couple- the husband had obviously done something very painful to his lower back and was twisted in a very awkward way on the edge of his chair. The old woman next to me was apparently with her daughter. Her hands shook as she rummaged around in her purse for something (I imagined it was probably hand sanitizer or lysol spray, after the way she had re-coiled from my boisterous coughing). Then, a young boy- Nintendo DS in hand- sat quietly with his dad. He had a bucket beside him. (The four empty chairs were all located around that poor kid). A 20-something blond and uber tan girl hobbled through the door with a cane, her right foot bruised, swollen, and jutting from her ankle in a grotesque manner. We were a homely bunch. Tired, worn-down, sick. Impatient. We exchanged sympathetic nods if our gazes met, but no one was up for small talk, understandably. Which worked for me, because I'm no good at small talk. I'd rather people-watch and be a busy-body.
After about an hour, a man walked up to the front desk and signed in. Then, he went back outside and returned with a tiny woman. She was 1/3 his size, hunched over, with a head of silvery white hair. She clung to his elbow, walking gingerly, and her hands were splotched with sun spots and bruises. Her face was worn, and her eyes were kind but possessed something of a confused look. As they walked by, I heard him say, "I'm right here, Mom. I gotcha." They settled themselves a few chairs down from me, and I glanced out of the corner of my eye to watch as he helped her sit down. I noticed the way he took her purse and placed it gently on the floor beside her and the way his hand found hers again in a loving, reassuring gesture. As the minutes passed, I found myself stealing glances at them more so than the others in the room. It's not that I had never seen a son looking after his elderly mother. It was just something about the way he spoke to her, the way he interacted with her- like it wasn't an inconvenience for him to be there, not like it probably was for the rest of us to be whiling away the hours in a crowded doctor's office.
I thought of Milo. I thought about how big he seemed to me last night when I went in to look at him before I went to bed- the way he was stretched out and somewhat contorted in the bottom right corner of the pack-n-play we brought here to the beach. I remembered how I had caught a glance of myself in the mirror while I was holding him and noticed for the first time that his feet could now wrap all the way around the back of my waist and how I felt my heart break a little bit again upon noticing it. I thought about how these last few nights when I've been rocking him to sleep that it really felt more like he was the one holding me- how his arms wrapped around my neck, stroking the back of my head with his hand, and how he sometimes caressed the side of my arm while humming something in his tiny sing-song voice.
"You'll love having a boy," all of my boy-mama friends had said after we had found out we were going to have a Milo. "There's just something about a boy and his mama."
I couldn't have known how true that would be. For all of the sweet moments I've shared with Ella, it seems that for the time being, we've hit a patch of butting heads and vying for "queen of the household." And that's okay. I want her to be strong and to go her own way and I know her spunkiness will serve her well as she gets older. But there's something so pure about my connection with Milo- the way his face beams when I walk into his room, the way he runs up to me with his mouth gaping open and drool flinging about, the slobbery open-mouthed kisses, the way he burrows himself into my chest and belly to watch TV. I tell people all the time that my kids are everything to me. Because it's true. But as I held Milo last night, I was struck by the realization that, for a time that's quickly diminishing, I am his everything, too. And I am reveling in that while it lasts. Because I'm not everything to Ella anymore. Oh, I'm still a lot to her, I think. She still needs me. She still wants me around, and hopefully she will for many more years. But she's becoming more and more self-sufficient. She pours her own cereal, turns on the TV, gets her own sippy out of the fridge, runs to the bathroom when she needs to go, dresses herself (god help me).
With even these small advances in her independence, things have gotten easier in our household in the recent weeks. But because parenthood presents so many dichotomies, it's gotten easier... but it's also gotten sadder too, in a way. Because it stings when we recognize we're not needed as much, even if it's the natural order of things. We strive to raise our kids to become self-sufficent, to think their own thoughts, go their own ways, and prime their wings in preparation to "fly the coop." But that doesn't mean we don't break out the box of tissues or hope they decide they're maybe not quite ready to let go of us yet.
Everyone has probably read "I'll Love You Forever." I'll be honest-- I've always found it a tad creepy that a grown woman is still sneaking into her son's house (and vice versa) in the middle of the night, but I get the point, and of course, I still blubbered like an idiot when I read it for the first time. As parents, it's so easy to get stuck in the here and now. It's easy to focus on how long the days seem, how sleepless the nights are, to worry endlessly if we're doing it "right."
And then there's an older man and his frail, aging mother in a doctor's office- holding her and loving her in a way she probably never imagined he would so many years ago when she held him. A reminder that this parenthood stuff isn't just about what happens today or tonight, or next week, or even next year. It's a twisting path that we walk, putting one foot in front of the other, because that's all we can do.
And it's one that, if we're truly lucky, will eventually come back full circle one day.
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