I Am A Kleenex

It's like I knew it was coming.  Earlier in the day, I was thinking about my friend Jason, how he and his wife had completed adoption proceedings and I was wondering how he was doing in his new role as father.  My thoughts drifted back to when Samantha was born, and the little and big pieces of advice that people gave me, and what, if any, advice I could give to him.  He asked me months ago what it was like, and I told him, "you're like a kleenex."  I told him to go out and let strangers wipe their nose, mouth, eyes, ears, basically any orafice that bodily fluid could leak from, let strangers wipe themselves all over him.  For a year.  Then see if he still wanted to have children.  Well, I'm not sure if he followed my advice, but that lesson was reinforced last night around midnight.  Samantha was feeling a little off, she was getting over a cold, and after playing at a neighbor's house, had no appetite when it was time for dinner.  I thought she overdid the snacks while playing, and didn't think much about it.  She went to sleep, and later, around midnight, I was struggling to stay away through John Frankenhimer's "The Train (A great film starring Burt Lancaster, set in the end of World War II, a Nazi colonel is trying to smuggle a trainload of masterpieces out of France before the Allies liberate the city.  See it, you'll love it).  Even though I'd seen it, I couldn't remember how it ended and therefore struggled on.  Then I heard Samantha cough a few times, then cried loudly.  The wife was two steps ahead of me, and she sat on the bed next to her and therefore was in perfect striking range for what could only be called projective vomiting.  It was almost comical.  I had just turned on the light, and, Ka-boom!  The wife, being the trooper that she is, tried to catch it in her hands.  That worked when she was tiny.  And although she's still too small for a booster seat, she has the vomiting power to impress any Monty Python fan.   I, being who I am, froze.  But after the initial shock, ran for towels.  "No, the big ones you idiot!" I heard someone say at some point.  

After it was nothing but dry heaves, we peeled away all of clothing beding, (thank you mattress pad, I knew I could count on you).  The wife sponged off the child, while I got started on removing the various solids from the different fabrics.  (Thank you Oxyclean.  Really.  I thought those blueberry and rasberry stains were set for life.)  Samantha was very upset, and also very sweet in that she felt bad that she had put her parents through what would later turn out to be four loads of wash, two different rug cleaners and several rounds of vaccuuming.   I smiled and told her, "that's our job.  Do you know how many times I threw up and my parents had to clean it up?  Lots.  And that's just the times I remember."

So around 1:00AM, with the wash going in the machine and the rest presoaking in a tub (did I mention Oxy Clean?  They're not even the sponsors here, I received no compensation from anyone at the company to write this, honestly), we all settled into bed. Samantha asked for a tissue.  I held out my arm.  "Here," I said.  And she wiped her nose on my pajama sleeve and we all drifted off to sleep.