As I sit here, buried in my own pile of tissues, I’m marveling at the irony of finding story inspiration in the bottom of a cough syrup bottle and a pair of pajamas well past their prime. Normally I wouldn’t choose a day like today to write, brain slogging along in an antihistamine-induced fog, squinting through watering eyes at a blurred screen.
Maybe it’s because I’m afraid of losing the muse if I wait another day, or maybe it’s just the Robitussin telling me I’ve got this. Either way, while battling a bout of the-flu-or-something seems as fitting a time as any to write an essay entitled, “The Impossible Things”.
And in bed with the-flu-or-something is indeed where this story takes place, or rather the couch, as that’s where I’ve found myself camped for the past 10 days. You might be wondering what’s so impossible about lying on a couch for a week and a half. Touché. The impossible part is the piece we moms, and sometimes dads, inevitably find ourselves doing at some point in our parenting journey. The thing that we truly might not have been capable of before the first time we set eyes on our first child. Being sick, while taking care of a kid who’s also sick.
In this case, the particularly gruesome and unidentified cocktail of viruses waging war on our household had begun with the kind of uncontrollable cough that precluded any notion of sleep, before being accompanied by a three-day vomiting bout that kept me up not only for my own sake but my two youngests’, who joined me on the couch those nights, all of us propped against each other in agony. By day six high fever had set in, bringing a whole new host of respiratory symptoms in its wake. Somehow the kids and I managed to catch and spread amongst each other what I can only assume were at least three different viruses within the span of 1.5 weeks.
Somehow, at my worst, I swapped out blankets, mopped up vomit, and administered meds, without so much as a wink of sleep for days on end. Even when it felt impossible. Not because I could. Because I couldn’t not.
And while we’ve all been there, had those taking-care-of sick-kids-while-sick days, it got me thinking about all the other impossible things we do as parents.
The single mother who juggles two jobs to make ends meet and still finds patience for her kids at the end of a long day.
The mom of twins, juggling a baby on each hip as she attempts to warm a bottle, doing everything in her power to meet the needs of two small humans, with no time to stop and take care of her own.
The father who’s bombarded by a tired wife and kids competing for his attention the moment he gets home from work. Who would give anything to put his feet up for just a minute or two, but tells his wife to take a bath instead, while he succumbs to the kids’ pleas to wrestle with them.
We parents do impossible things every single day, often without even realizing it, without stopping to acknowledge, to appreciate that, even on the days when we feel like we accomplish nothing at all, the very act of being a parent: of instinctively, reflexively, selflessly, putting our children before ourselves, that’s the impossible thing.
