There are some times and certain occasions, where, as a parent, you wonder if you are sliding down the chute into crazyland, never to return.
The other night was such a night.
Gabriel has had a wracking cough that has popped up every now and again for a month. Don't get me wrong. He's peachy keen as mustard, except that every now and again he goes nuts trying to remove this phlegm in his throat, and can't. Just doesn't have the throat muscles yet. We've been hitting this sucker with everything we've got. Steam baths. Hot showers. Cough syrup. Juice, honey, eucalyptus chest rubs, you name it, we tried it. A doctor declares it to be bronchial spasms, and prescribes liquid Ventolin. This works to an extent, but there is one nasty side-effect, which is that instead of haplessly trying to cough up sticky mucus, Gabriel now has his "vomit trigger" easily pressed. Giving this stuff right after mealtime is asking for trouble.
Anyway, he's been sleeping okay, and eating, and generally as happy as Larry, except for those coughs, and their dreaded aftermath. At 4am, I was woken by a nasty-sounding cough. No problem -- I calmly switch into medic mode, and move him to the couch in the living room, where I administer syrup and honey, and observe him for awhile. The cough subsides. Seems fine.
So I take him back to his bed. Daddy the problem-solver. Nope. Gabriel immediately vomits over his pillow, despite me taking the precaution of placing a towel next to it, which is what he's supposed to vomit on. I now switch into cleaner mode. The pillow case comes off, and I take him to the bathroom to get him to rinse his mouth with a cup. He takes a sip, and then drops the cup on the floor, spilling water everywhere. By now I'm steaming with anger, and tell him to sit on a chair in the living room until I've sorted this mess out.
Control! I am going to get control. That mythical, illusive substance always just out of reach of a parent - control.
Gabriel sits on the chair silently, and then I notice a little stream of liquid dribbling from his mouth, down his shirt. I stare at this, baffled, until I realize that in my anger I've forgotten to ask him to spit out the rinsing water from the cup. Again, with a change of clothes, he sits on the couch while I prepare some warm milk for him. Suddenly he coughs heavily again, and then, in the blink of an eye, a stream of vomit is hurled over the couch. There is a kicker here, which I'll reveal at the end. The kicker does not involve the fact that the couch is made of soft, porous fabric, the kind which instantly and permanently soaks up all spills and smells. Lilac has often spoken of her dream of taking the couch to the backyard and burning it. When she speaks of this dream of cleansing flames, a warm twinkle glows in her eyes, like a child speaking about Santa Claus.
Breaking out the towels, I clean up the couch, and him, and decide we're sleeping out here tonight, to give Lilac and Isabella a chance at peace. Pulling out the fold-away bed ben
eath the couch, I discover that, in the several months since it was last used by humans, it's seen plenty of action as a Honeymoon Hotel by mice. Covered in mouse scat.
While I'm outside in the frigid winter air, banging on the mattress to remove the mouse scat, (this is about 5am by now), Gabriel decides that it would be fun to use the bed as a trampoline, and this is my view through the window as I'm banging away. It's moments like these when, as a parent, you can really feel your sanity slowly melting, like a Salvador Dali clock.
The good news is that he settled quickly once I explained that Aunty Bec would NOT be taking out to the movies later that day unless he slept NOW.
Oh, and that kicker that I mentioned earlier? After Gabriel vomited on the couch, he turned around to me with a delighted expression and, pointing to the shape of the pool of vomit, said "Hey, it looks like a happy face!"
Joshua Winterson.