How about that Michael Phelps, huh? Single-minded determination, laser-like focus, conquering his body’s limitations. The ultimate competitor.
I’d like to see him take care of a toddler while suffering from a good bout of stomach flu. (Dara Torres has probably done it, but then she’s a goddess, being over 40 and an Olympic athlete and all.)
I’d heard the horror stories before: Entire family succumbs to a nasty virus that has them battling each other for the bathroom, pits parent against parent in the fight over who has to drag her or his aching body out of bed to change the kids’ vomit-covered sheets, reduces the parents to shivering skeletons sleeping in puddles of sweat while their fully recovered and now ravenous child chirps, “Pasta? Pasta?” How does anyone survive?
Honestly, I didn’t have it that bad. In fact, I had the good fortune to get hit on a Sunday, when I could lie moaning in bed and Mike could, with only a tiny bit of reluctance, take Jake to a work party. (His only complaint upon returning was that he was so busy chasing Jake around that he never got to eat any of the food.) I did, however, have the bad fortune of getting hit on the Sunday before the Monday and Tuesday when Jake’s school was closed for summer break.
In other words, like an Olympic athlete, I found myself pushing my body beyond what is probably healthy (standing dizzily in the heat of a toddler playground while Jake ran an endless loop on the slide). I kept going by tapping into that voice in my head telling me I could work through the pain (or, perhaps, Jake’s pain, as when I found my way to a shady bench to rest I refused to leave it when Jake fell and starting crying, instead calling out, “Did you fall, Mister?” and prompting a woman at the next bench to stand up and bellow, “Is that anyone’s child?” She seemed only slightly embarrassed when I assured her that — my heartless response to him falling down notwithstanding — he was, in fact, mine.) I made it through the school-less-stomach-flu day, in other words, with the utter commitment of an Olympic athlete going for the gold. (Okay, maybe I had no choice, but neither do a whole bunch of the Chinese athletes, and it doesn’t make them any less committed.)
There is one big difference between me and the Olympic athletes, though. (Okay, two, if you count, oh, what great physical shape they’re in.) A gold medal, however awesome and life-changing it might be, surely can’t compare to the feeling of sitting with my neighbors at the end of the day watching 20-month-old Jake walk, grinning, single-file along the fence in front of our house between the four-year-olds who live on either side of us.
In that single moment bathed in late-afternoon sunshine, my toddler grew into a little boy and my heart grew with him.
Continue reading ‘A New Olympic Event — Caring for a Toddler While You Have the Stomach Flu’
