If you don't enjoy stories about puking you might want to skip this post

My kids are sick. AGAIN. There is just way too much throwing up going on around this place and I’m ready for it to be over. Yesterday it was Amanda. She was miserable, poor little thing. By bedtime she was feeling better and I thought life would be returning to normal. Then at about 4:30am Alyssa woke up crying inconsolably. I finally got her to sleep in my lap and breathed a huge sigh of relief when I felt a sudden warmth flood over me. Unfortunately it turned out not to be motherly love, but instead the contents of Alyssa’s stomach, which is not nearly as pleasant. All over her and me and my clean bed sheets. Ick.

Having a 2-year-old who’s throwing up us is an extra special kind of delightful because there’s that added element of surprise. You can sit within inches of her for hours fully prepared to capture the puke with a bowl or a wastebasket or your husband's golf hat, but just as you stand up to use the bathroom or attend to some other completely unnecessary task, say like feeding your other child, SURPRISE! Puke everywhere.

Until Amanda started school, she rarely got sick, but now she seems to catch every single bug and then brings them home to share. Our last round of sickness happened before Christmas, first Amanda and then on the first day of school vacation Alyssa came down with it. I’d recruited my niece Courtney to keep the girls entertained while I helped out Santa by building a Barbie House (which, in case you're wondering, was too big to fit through the chimney fully-assembled). I had these grand plans of sending them off to the park or Super Franks (which is like Chuck E. Cheese but less annoying) for several hours while I built the house and ran a few errands. Alyssa had shown no sign of illness when I made those plans though.

When she woke up that morning with an earache I got worried. But after some Tylenol and eardrops she was back to herself and I’d adjusted my plans to think Courtney would be sticking close to home and then just as we were heading out the front door to pick up Courtney from the BART station I heard this huge SPLASH at my feet. HUH? Sure enough Alyssa was throwing up. She was thoughtful enough to completely miss her clothing and everyone else’s. Bravo for that.

The fact that I was picking up Courtney kind of brought this puking moment full circle for me. My sister, Darin, had her two daughters when I was a teenager. Perfect timing since she’d wasted… err spent… almost every Friday night of her teen years babysitting my brother and I… and as the story went, I OWED HER BIG. So I babysat my nieces quite a bit.

One time I remember rather clearly was when Courtney was just a baby… under a year I’d guess…so I was 15 or 16 and though my sister had a wonderful babysitter they called “Nana” who watched Courtney on a regular basis while Darin worked, she wanted me to baby-sit Courtney when she was sick, because though she would have gotten wonderful care from Nana, my sister said she wouldn’t feel comfortable calling Nana every ten minutes to make sure Courtney was okay…wouldn’t want Nana to think she was one of those neurotic new mothers or anything… so it was on this particular day that I had my very first experience with projectile vomiting.

This moment is etched permanently in my memory, as it was both horrifying and wondrous at the same time. Please note that Courtney is now 23 years old so it is possible that in over 20 years of telling this story I have dramatized the memory just a bit but not much. We have this plastic Elmo toy that we plug into the sprinklers, and I promise you that Courtney was just like that toy. One second she was this adorable slightly feverish baby playing on the floor in her purple footy pajamas and the next, her head started spinning around like a top and vomit started shooting out in all directions and in random spectacular patterns all over the living room carpet. Never seen anything like it before or since. It was AMAZING. Seriously, I wish you could have seen it. I just sat there staring, frozen, and then as quickly as it started it was over. Her head stopped spinning and she crawled over to me and smiled this adorable smile and then laid her head down in my lap.

It was one of those days that I’ll always remember because I actually felt like I learned something about myself.

Most of the guys I dated for any length of time at some point told me that they thought I would make a wonderful mother someday. I have absolutely no idea why they would have said that about me but I heard it a lot. I truly don’t think I mothered my boyfriends. I’ve always been the kind who needed my space. Oh no! Is it possible that it might be the longer term equivalent of, “Well, she has a wonderful personality”? You know how if a guy said a girl had a wonderful personality it almost certainly meant he thought she was butt-ugly? Well perhaps the “she’ll make a wonderful mother someday,” meant something equally as awful?

Anyway, as I said, I never could figure out what they saw in me that made them think that I would make a good mother. But my point wasn’t why they said it about me, it was that I didn’t believe it about myself. For years I thought I was far too selfish, self-centered and flighty to ever make a decent mother. I loved being an aunt and I figured I’d make a fabulous grandmother. But the thought of motherhood scared me to death. What if I couldn’t handle it? What if I was one of those moms who couldn’t take the pressure?

Well after Courtney puked all over the place and then crawled over and covered me in puke, my first thought was not the expected EWW get this kid away from me, but instead it was that I absolutely adored her. That I quite possible loved her even more after witnessing the amazing spectacle of vomit than I had before, and that I wanted to do anything in my power to make her feel better. This gave me a bit of hope and I thought maybe I will be a good mother! And then I took her out in the backyard and hosed her down.

So fast-forward 20-some years to when I picked up Courtney at the BART station with my own little vomiting baby and had to say, "Sorry Courtney, I hate to do this to you but YOU OWE ME BIG…"