No time for sickness.

An account of my day before 9AM.

Caroline crawled across me, her hands brushing against my arm— a radiating heat on my cold skin.

“Can we please go downstairs, mommy? It’s morning time,” my four-year-old said after spending the night horizontally between my husband and I.

I rolled over after another night of cruddy sleep begging for a few more minutes, but quickly got up as I saw her cross the hall and climb back into her bed.

Her eyes were closed and her breaths were long and heavy when I got to her. She had fallen back asleep, an unusual happening compared to her normal charge to the kitchen for breakfast. I turned and caught a glance at the clock.

“Shit.” I slipped under my breath. I rushed back into our bedroom.

“What time is it?” Clayton asked, still under the covers.

“I do not even want to tell you,” I whispered.

He shot up.

7:40AM. He was supposed to go in early, and I was supposed to get up to write, but we turned off the alarm once again after holding a wailing Kate because of a new tooth, or tummy troubles, or some kind of insane karma we have dangling over our heads that manifests in having children who do not sleep consistently through the night.

We had a suspicion Caroline was getting sick. Rosy cheeks, warm to the touch, no appetite. But there wasn’t time for anyone to get sick, the week had to go on. We had meetings to get to, and Kate was sick last week, so now our to-do lists were double in length. I had a 9AM with our biggest client and we were already supposed to be dressed, fed, in the car speeding down Stadium on our second episode of Thomas & Friends Storytime.

We were going to be fine.

Ignoring any possibility that Caroline was in fact sick, I got myself ready, spraying another layer of dry shampoo across my head, hoping no one at work would notice my increasingly greasy roots.

Kate waddled into the bathroom in her new ‘dino jammies’, pointing to her built-in-footies that had white triangles of fabric resembling dinosaur toenails. With a quick pass of Clayton’s deodorant under my armpits, I slipped Kate into the only clean clothes we had left in her dresser.

One dressed, one to go.

When I left the bathroom I found a tiny human in red snowman jammies face down on the floor. I inhaled. “Okay, Caroline, we have to do a lot of things to do in a short period of time this morning, so let’s work on being super helpful, okay,” I said as I pried her body off the floor.

There was no time for proper patience but I knew getting into it with my 4-year-old would only result in a bigger tantrum or setback. I had no other choice, I went immediately into bribe mode. “How about we have a FUN breakfast this morning? We can eat it in the car! Do you want chocolate milk this morning- yay!”

“MILK!” Kate clapped.

Caroline ignored any questions I asked and instead rolled around, whining and whimpering.

I couldn’t help myself, “This is what happens when you don’t eat dinner like you should Caroline!” I said thinking back to the spoon by spoon counting Clayton and I underwent with her at dinner the night prior, “Food gives you energy. I need you to be a helpful member of this family.”

I grabbed her shirt and pants and began to dress her despite her flimsy body retaliating. She wouldn’t stand on her own, so I ignored my inner monologue which went straight to convincing myself that we in fact do not have enough boundaries, and we most definitely have to figure out how to get this child to listen because she’s four now and Dorge’s are kind, and I once again do not have time for these antics!

I carried her down to the kitchen and sat her on the tall kitchen chair. I began to pull together some kind of food in our almost empty fridge that signaled we were about to be out of town for the holidays.

I began slicing cheese, salami, and apple into narrow pieces that would easily fit in the bento box we’d be using as our ‘fun breakfast’ tray on the way to school. I threw a piece of toast in the toaster, my ‘insurance food’ that wouldn’t leave me questioning if the girls would be hungry 30 minutes after I dropped them off — feeding into some irrational fear I have about my children always being hungry.

“Alrighty girls!” I said, readjusting my tone into the FUN parent I am, on a morning where the clock is against me, and we don’t even have shoes on yet, “Let’s get that chocolate milk we talked about - whoo hoo!”

I turned to see Caroline’s pale face. She opened her mouth and ejected a clear pile of vomit.

“MILK!” Kate clapped.

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Thanks as always to

Brooke Smith

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