And you’re prepared for none of it
Across from my bed, Charlie sat in the glider chair playing a video game on my phone. I’d been tasked with watching him, five years young, for an hour as I lay in bed. My wife had to take our other son to baseball and didn’t want to bring his little brother along this time.
As I turned over laboriously on my left side in bed, I asked Charlie if he could stop for a minute and come give me a hug. He immediately obliged. When he climbed onto the bed and bent down to hug me, however, he accidentally kneed me in the balls. “Charlie, you kicked Papa in the balls,” I said.
“Sorry,” he said, smiling.
Later, I heard him downstairs having a meltdown. Instantly, I felt the urge to comfort him but because I was flaring with chronic illness symptoms and confined to bed, that wasn’t going to be a possibility.
Or was it?
Knowing Charlie was in distress and that his little brain couldn’t figure out how to manage his emotions, I immediately set a bold plan in motion. Slowly rising up in bed, I stepped onto the floor and panned the room like Arnold in The Terminator. No neighbors’ kids were lurking in the corner waiting to blast me with sawed-off water guns. No evidence of foul play, such as a half-eaten yogurt on my nightstand left by my oldest son, a bag of Cheez-Its on the floor, or a bottle of bad cologne on the dresser.
I saw him hitting his mama in the shins with his small fists when I finally made it downstairs. “What kind of shit is going on — ?” I muttered to myself.
“NO, Charlie. NO. Charlie? I said to stop hitting me. You’re hurting me. Charlie!”
The lactic acid in my body was building up as if I were a Solo Stove portable fire pit. I walked over to Charlie, who was like Jake Paul training for his fight against Mike Tyson. Mama’s shins were getting pummeled.
I managed to get down to his level without my GI symptoms rendering me motionless in the fetal position on the floor. His face was covered in dirt, he had green chalk all over his forehead and knees, and tears were streaming down his face.
“Charlie, honey,” I said, grabbing his wrists mid-punch. “It’s okay.”
He cried some more. “I’m going to take you upstairs, clean you up, and you’ll listen to some music with Papa and play on your IPad.”
His breathing slowed and he began to calm himself. I put my arms around him and hugged him. “It’s okay, my son. You’ll come up with me.”
Charlie wiped his tears and gave me a crooked smile.
But then I suddenly remembered I was very fatigued and symptomatic. And that maybe lying on the kitchen floor for a respite and yelling, “At least my mama loves me,” wouldn’t be all it was cracked up to be.
I thought about asking Charlie if he might carry me back upstairs to my bedroom. At that point, Mama had left the scene and was presumably flying one-way, first-class to Costa Rica.
I accidentally farted loudly. The pressure of the moment was getting to me.
“Let’s go, Charlie,” I said, “sit with me here for a minute. Quick.” I safely made it to the dining room and sat on one of the crayon-stained, chicken nugget-stained, strawberry-stained dining chairs.
I faced the chair next to it that looked like it had been previously shat on by a bison, pushing it back just far enough to put my feet up on it.
I closed my eyes and started some slow nasal breathing. Charlie hadn’t stabbed me in the neck with a nearby blunt object, so I figured I’d be okay for a few minutes.
When my symptoms started to abate, I knew it was time to haul my chronically ill keister back upstairs. Charlie came in tow.
Back in my bedroom, I collapsed on the bed, totally worn out from the parental crisis intervention.
“Alexa, play ‘Thunder’ by Imagine Dragons,” I heard Charlie say.
“Just a young gun with a quick fuse. I was uptight, wanna let loose. I was dreaming of bigger things. And wanna leave my old life behind,” played from my Alexa. Charlie hopped up on my bed and started jumping around to the music.
“Charlie, I’m gonna puke. Stop jumping, please,” I growled.
Charlie kept jumping.
“Alexa, play ‘I Go to Extremes” by Billy Joel,” he then said.
“Good God,” I said, closing my eyes. “I gotta clean you up. Give me a couple of minutes. We need some baby wipes. Do we have baby wipes?”