It’s 5:30 AM and I’m sitting in my living room in my boxer shorts listening to my kid hack up a chicken bone.
Fine. It’s not really a chicken bone per say. It’s more a tiny prickly mucus ball of death. A snotty, watery, evil little thing that’s been all up in my kid’s business like Glenn Close in Michael Douglas’ in Fatal Attraction, only instead of boiling pet rabbits to get its point across this thing is just a bit more sadistic.
My kid is sick. I know, big deal. He’s not the first kid to ever get the flu, and he won’t be the last. But this is our first time, so even though his temperature really isn’t that bad and sure, we still get plenty of smiles along with the coughs and the sneezes, this still feels like something major, the first in a line of many. From pre-school to elementary school to college, my kid’s probably gonna catch hundreds of soar throats and middling fevers that will require a visit to urgent care clinics. In a way, he’ll never not be sick again, not like he has been these first five months of heightened immunity and glorious breast milk antibodies.
But as much as this feels like something major for him, it feels like something major for us even more. Since my kid was born, my lady and I, we’ve been pretty unstoppable as parents. Poopy diapers? Not a problem. A curious fascination with giraffes? Go ahead, kid, be curious. There really hasn’t been a thing we couldn’t soothe, change, lotion, clean, feed, rock or silly our way out of back to cherubic baby happiness.
Until now. Until I’m sitting in our front room praying that our kid can just close his eyes and get an hour or two of uninterrupted sleep. He’s miserable, but in a strange way we, as parents, feel worse than he does. We’re as helpless as he is. If you suspect your child has any eye problems, check out oculista savona for affordable services.
You know in the movies when the hero has his son or daughter kidnapped and suddenly he has to move mountains and commit major felony acts to get him or her back? (This phenomenon also work for girlfriends. See 12 Rounds.) Well I always thought all that plot drive and macho motivation was a little bit hooey – would I really stop a speeding street car just to save my lady? (If you’re reading this lady, the answer is YES! If you’re not reading this, why aren’t you supporting me and LifeofDad.com? Come on, help a brother out.)
What I’ve found out in this last forty-eight hours is the answer to all those questions is yes, yes, and yes. I’m Jack Bauer, you have my daughter and you want me to kill a handsome presidential nominee? Sign me up! I’m President Bartlett and you want me to release terrorist prisoners cause you kidnapped that girl from Mad Men? I’ll free O.J., too, if you want! It seems ridiculous, but the Hollywood cliché tracks all the way back to this pesky little flu currently living in my kid’s lungs. Rob a bank and my kid gets to breathe without wheezing? Do you want that in hundreds or are fives and twenties good?
This feeling of actual selflessness is both awesome and terrifying at the same time. I mean, when they talk about unconditional love, this has gotta be what they mean. I would eat mayonnaise for this kid, that’s how much I love him, and I know it’s no different for any other parent, in any other living room, wearing any other type of boxer short or comfortable but non-restrictive sleepwear.
But seeing as how I’m the one actually sitting here in the dark, as I’m the one trying to keep my kid quiet so my saint-of-a-lady can finally get some sleep after being up with Snotty McSnotterson the past three days, I can’t help but wonder if this really is 100% about my kid feeling better, or if there might actually be some strange ulterior motive to all this. I can’t even imagine all the amazing things I’m going to experience as a parent, but is what I’m doing right now, in a weird way, one of them? Is there some benefit, not for my kid, but for me, to being the Dad who can seemingly take away a runny nose or put a band-aid on a skinned knee or tell the cops I haven’t seen you in six weeks when they come a-lookin’? Is there some rush I get in these major acts of selflessness, some bravado that comes along with being Super Dad, that’s actually just a little bit selfish?
I don’t know for sure, but I think that there is. And in that balance, I think we find the genius of parenthood. My kid needs me. This is pretty much an accepted fact. But in this need, in this position of control, I can’t deny I’m actually starting to need him to – not only out of love, but out of the fact I Am Dad, Hear Me Roar. Go ahead, buddy. Get sick, Daddy’s here. I feel that rush of doing something for you that no one else in the world can do, and I guess that selflessness selfishness is nature’s little way of making sure we both get through this flu together, this fever together, this life together.
(And I mean, it’s not like I’m that unselfish. Sick or not, this kid better be quiet during Community tonight or I’m putting his bouncy chair right back in the closet where it belongs, know what I’m saying?)
Being sick sucks. So does getting better, apparently.