Sick Mummy

We often treat outsiders with respect and tread on our nearest and dearest. This includes the way our kids treat their parents. Short of lining our sprogs up in a row and making them answer to whistle calls Captain Von Trapp-style, often times, in true bang-your-head-against-the-wall-manner, it can feel like this Captain’s orders are just falling on deaf ears.

And then the Captain, AKA Mummy, gets sick and the ship goes down.

Well it could have. Let me rewind. It was the Thursday before the Easter break, which also happened to be the start of two week’s school holidays. Ironically, I had just returned that evening from interviewing a nurse who, last year, almost died from the flu but, after spending three and a half weeks in a coma, managed to survive to tell the tale.*

That night a sore throat came on and, by the morning, I had the full-blown flu. This wasn’t just your average cold, but the knock-you-off-your-feet virus, which comes with sore throat, loss of voice, pounding headache, complete loss of energy, fever, delirium and all the other usual lovely symptoms.

However, I was scheduled to work from home that day so I pushed through it and began writing up the flu story, occasionally getting up to check if I was the blue colour described by the lady in my story.

Meanwhile, the kids came home full of Easter vigour and excited for the holiday plans ahead. They didn’t happen.

Instead each day mummy got sicker and sicker, one day unable to sit up to have a drink of water for several hours – which was when the fever and slight delirium set in. After they’d seen me at my worst, much to my horror, I heard the three of them congregating in the hall outside my door trying to come up with ways to cheer me up.

It was interesting the different ways they coped: Miss Six brought me my childhood Care Bear to cuddle while she scuttled off to draw me a picture while Masters Nine and Six both gave me their money (which I duly gave back of course).

But while Master Six kept his distance, quietly sitting in the corner watching over me, his older brother returned dressed in his best dress-shirt and stood before me.

“I’ve put on my best shirt mummy to try and cheer you up because this is the worst day of my life,” he said, to which I burst into tears again at the sweetness of it all.

His face fell and I felt terrible.

I had to pull myself together so I asked him to go up the road to get some Panadol.

Several hours later, once they had kicked in I was able to sit up and noticed ‘I love you’ post-it notes all over the door. They had since got bored with playing nurse to mum and gone off and made huts, doing a fabulous job of entertaining themselves

For once, the three of them got on brilliantly and that night Master Nine stepped up and cooked dinner for everyone for the first time.

It took three weeks for the virus to leave my system so although we did absolutely nothing for our Easter and entire school holidays, it is a time that holds a special place in my heart for we saw each other through different eyes. I was forced to slow down and become a chilled mum, instead of constantly on the run, barking orders at them. The appreciation was clear in their eyes and, instead of their usual sibling bickering, they bonded together to make life easy for their sick mum.

It may have taken seeing their mum in a vulnerable position to gain their respect, but it was there when it mattered and, as a result, the ship didn’t sink – it stayed afloat thanks to my crew coming to the fore.


*The story mentioned above is in today's Northern Advocate, or you can read it at:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Humans-of-Whangarei/417107768393351?ref=hl or

https://www.facebook.com/NorthlandDHB/posts/863632740350201:0 

Stepping Up

Nigel Latta says the best way to teach boys values is to model them yourself.

So I was in slight despair when Master Nine told me about an incident he witnessed in the playground where a kid was bullied and someone ran to the teacher to intervene.

“And what did you do?” I asked.

“Nothing. It wasn’t me or my friends who bullied him,” he answered, seemingly proud that he wasn’t to blame.

“But did you do anything to try and stop it?”

“No, I don’t tell tales.”

Your actions tell him more than a thousand lectures ever could, I recalled reading in the Values Maketh The Man chapter of Nigel Latta’s recently-read Mothers Raising Sons book.

Clearly either I hadn’t been carrying out enough good deeds, or Master Nine hadn’t been paying attention when I did. I decided to give a lecture anyway. I’ll spare you the dialogue – something along the lines of, rather than being a mere by-stander, how proud I would be if he stepped up to help people in need and those actions, in some incidences, could be deemed heroic.

As I ab-libbed, I began building an image in my head of my heroic son as a result of witnessing his mother carrying out heroic actions for others. When I started seeing capes, I realised I’d gone too far and reined myself in. He wasn’t listening anyway and had moved onto showing his siblings how many ‘orange bits’ (dried fruit) he’d got in his cereal that morning.

Later that day we walked up to the local supermarket. Master Nine had scootered so he waited outside the doors while the twins and I grabbed a few items. On the walk home he mentioned that he’d gone through the ‘in’ doors and, on the way back out them, got stuck.

“Why did you need to go in?” I enquired.

“Because an old man dropped his wallet on his way into the supermarket so I went in and gave it to him.”

Ping. I felt a pang of – what was that – pride? My son had stepped up instead of choosing to be a mere by-stander!

“That’s what I was talking about. You stepped up and leant a helping hand and now something good will probably happen to you,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Oh you will see. It’s just rather magical that way – it’s called karma.”

“Well something good didn’t happen to me because when I was coming back out of the supermarket, the poles only moved one way and then someone came in and they pinged me. And then I couldn’t get back out the door until someone came in and the doors opened.”

“But did it make you feel good when you gave the man back his wallet?”

“Yes.”

Back home at dinner time he announced that still nothing good had happened to him.

I had made a very lazy dinner that night due to being unwell – baked spaghetti baskets with melted cheese and only a few of them had the small sausages from the can.

While the twins only found one in their dinner, Master Nine happened to find five sausages, which was completely unplanned on my part.

“Hey, you were right,” he declared. “Something good has happened to me!”

Thanks to karma and some little sausages, I think we have a super-hero in the making.

Birthday Boy

 

“Mum can you not be embarrassing today?” asked my oldest, minutes before his ninth birthday party began.

“How so?”

“Just don’t be embarrassing,” he begged.

“Okay, so is it alright if I wear this to your Ninja Turtle party?” I asked, realising I was wearing a green-striped shirt.

“Okay,” he sighed.

“And can you please not hover round the kitchen asking when the food is going to be ready,” I asked him in return.

“Yep,” he cried distractedly, rushing off to answer the door bell.

Soon me and my house were bombarded by nine boisterous boys, counting my own two, plus birthday boy’s sister so, having just finished a last-minute Ninja Turtle cake, I got stuck into preparing the food.

It’s drop-offs and pick-ups these days – long gone are the baby days when the party was more about entertaining the adults. Flip, I remember the twins’ first birthday party when there were around 100 on the guest list. I’m pretty sure that’s not a journalist’s exaggeration either – between all the friends and family and their kids it was around that figure. Not all of them could make it, thank goodness, for the baby capsules alone took up all of the small lounge.

Organising a party for that many, in between baby feeds and sleeps was quite stressful but nowadays it’s a lot easier, I thought to myself as I put the pizzas in the oven and tried not to over- boil the cocktail sausages.

“Guys come and look at all this pizza,” said birthday boy, who like the Ninja Turtles, is mad-keen on pizza, and had forgotten my plea not to hover round the kitchen.

A trail of boys followed him into the kitchen and then, spotting the food strewn around the bench on various platters, decided they were ravenous.

“Shoo!” I ushered them back out of the kitchen.

Next minute, another lot of boys thundered up the stairs on a mission and filed past. “Mmmm Burger Rings!” exclaimed one, catching site of one of the plates.

They all swarmed in closer like a flock of hungry seagulls. Finally after another ten similar episodes (and that’s no exaggeration either), I locked them outside for the remaining ten minutes while I got the food to the table.

It turns out nine-year-old boys eat a lot. Despite the fact the table was groaning with food, by the end of the party, it had all gone.

Another difference, I noted, was that nine-year-old boys entertain themselves.

“Jodi, can we play hide-‘n’-seek?” one lovely well-mannered boy came and asked.

“Uh, sure,” I replied thinking of the pass the parcel and musical cushions games I had lined up.

As it happened, they spent the majority of the party outside playing hide-n’-seek (minus a few others who were hooked on the Play Station), meaning I had to drag them away for my organised games. However, they still happily partook and the post-junk food musical statues went down a treat with all their new-found energy, as did the dress up and eat chocolate with a knife and fork before the dice lands on six, with a fair amount of cheating there.

Yes, despite the carnage – a whole lot of popped balloons, discarded wrapping paper, dropped food and a trail of muddy footprints throughout the house – birthday parties definitely get easier.

All except for one thing: do you think I could get a happy smiling photo of my birthday boy and his mum?

Never mind, I photo-bombed one of him smiling with his mates. Oops – there went my pact not to be embarrassing mum.