Sick Week

This is the fourth day in which my infant daughter has been sick. In fact, at this very moment she is fighting sleep. Her tired pink eyelids don't know that she is sleepy so she is wailing, pleading with me to pick her up and let her play.

Earlier this morning I sat on the floor with her and just let myself be a present mother. I just sat there. She crawled to me and then away from me to a toy. Then back and forth, back and forth, just to make sure I was still there.

At one point she stood eye to eye with me and turned red in the face while she grunted. I was oddly honored that Eve felt comfortable enough to do her business with me present. I laughed inwardly at her beautiful shamelessness.

Being a mother is, in my opinion, one of the oddest jobs on earth.

I smile as my shiny-faced infant holds out her arms to me and immediately thrusts her face onto my shirt, rubbing her runny nose all over it.

I sometimes smile, sometimes grumble at the sound of Cheerios crunching under my feet on the kitchen floor. "Missed a few," I say to myself. At other times, I'm so dogged tired from the day that I forget or downright refuse to wipe up the food from the floor.

Cheerios.

Banana pieces.

Whole chunks of chicken nuggets.

I justify the food on the floor with a Biblical story I learned as a kid: Kind Boaz told his workers to leave sheaves of wheat behind the harvest so that poor Ruth could find some food.

And so do I.

I laugh at Eve's strength when I bring the bulb syringe to her nose. With surprising speed, she whips her head left and right to avert the inevitable. If I use a tissue, she rips it right out of my hand and throws it on the floor so I can't clean her face. Feisty little one.

My favorite moment with her is right when she wakes up. We hug. I pat her back and she pats mine. It makes me smile every time.

As I reflect on this week, I don't see much in the way of what I have done. I suppose every mother feels that way when there is sickness in the house. But I see that through her mucous-rivered face she feels happy and safe. She even dances. That's all a mother could ask for on days like this.