What I Did For Love: Cringe Edition

What Would You Stop For? Imagine all the baseball….it’s easy i...

What I Did For Love: Cringe Edition

Warning! There be gross stuff ahead…..

I was sitting on our back deck, enjoying a beautiful spring morning when my son came out and asked me to sew a button on his baseball jersey. This was obviously a great time to teach him how to sew a button on his baseball jersey and I dug out a needle and thread. I showed him how to thread the needle and make a knot. We realized we needed scissors and both went inside to look for them (scissors travel around our house, never landing in the same place twice). When we got back to the table the threaded needle was gone. Son and I looked around, mystified. It wasn’t on the ground, it wasn’t on the table where we’d left it. I happened to look over at Dash, our white lab, sitting there in his favorite sun spot, and he was licking his chops, like he was finishing a tasty treat.

Panic. He ate the needle. I was sure of it. He eats everything, never bothering to waste time differentiating the edible from the inedible.

I ran over to him, cursing, and pried open his mouth. I ran my hand around his mouth, nothing. I pushed my hand farther and farther still, and partway down his throat found the needle, sideways. Eased it out and commenced adrenaline rush weakness.

It sounds gross and potentially dangerous. It was gross, all wet and mushy and uncomfortable to have my hand so far inside my dog. It was not dangerous because I’ve had to pull things out of Dash’s mouth before and he’s never once tried to bite me. Sometimes I think he knows when he’s gotten himself into trouble and is relieved I am around to get him out of it. Other times, like today, I doubt he could be that smart. He just swallowed a needle, after all. Hardly a qualifier for Mensa.

And this is what pet ownership is. You go where you never thought you could go. And you don’t even hesitate.

This is also what parenting is, which it turns out was a good preparation for owning Dash.

Cringe warning, I’m about to give some graphic examples of how gross things can get when we have kids and pets. Or at least how gross things can get when I have kids and pets.

Story number one.

Once when my son was maybe four years old we were sitting watching TV in that short sweet spot between bath time, and bed. He may have said something about not feeling well. And then he started throwing up. My immediate instinct was to protect the couch (there was no chance of getting him to the bathroom to finish the job, not without messing up lots of carpet on the way). So I stuck my hands out in a sort of cup and he threw up into them. Into my hands. My bare hands. Some of it got on my jeans. He finished, we made our way to the bathroom where I dumped the vomit in the toilet, washed my hands and helped him wash out his mouth. As I leaned towards him, I bumped against him. He looked down at my wet jeans and said, “what is that?”

I said, “you threw up on me, that is vomit.”

He said, “Eeww! Get that away from me!”

The gratitude can be astounding.

I stand by my instinct, though. This was my second child and I had parented long enough by then to know I’d rather wash my hands and jeans than the couch and the carpet. It’s an economy of time and effort, that’s all.

Story number two

Another time Husband and I were sitting on the couch (lot of couch sitting in this family, I’m not going to lie) watching TV and our son was playing with our dog Beau behind the couch. Son was probably two or three at the most. Son comes toddling around the couch, giggling. He thrusted his finger into Husband’s face and said “What’s this!?”

Son waves his finger so close Husband can barely see it. “Ask your mother,” Husband said, eyes fixed on a baseball game in the bottom of the ninth inning, tied up at 3-3.

Son waves finger at me, I notice it has something brown on it. Did he find some chocolate? Dip into the paints?

“What’s this?” Son repeats.

“I don’t know, where did you get it?” I ask.

“Beau’s hiney,” answers Son, whereby Husband leaps off the couch and runs to the bathroom screaming, “Oh my God, that touched my mouth!”

I fell on my side, spread out on the couch, almost unable to breathe I was laughing so hard. Maybe I had just the slightest bit of anger at Husband that night because I remember being so ridiculously pleased that Son had touched his mouth with a finger straight out of our dog’s butt. Eventually I helped Son clean his finger and delivered a lesson on not putting fingers into the dog’s hiney.

Story number three

When Daughter was a baby we got a call that some dear friends were on their way over to meet her. Husband and I both went upstairs to change her diaper and put on the adorable outfit said friends had bought her (I loved doing that, making sure people saw the baby in the thing they gave her, you can afford that kind of attention to detail when you only have one child). I had her on the changing table in her room, Husband beside me, chatting about how happy we were to see these friends. They were an older couple, in fact he lived with them for a couple of years and you couldn’t meet nicer people.

Daughter’s diaper was off, and with one hand I held both her feet up to expose her butt for a wipe when it happened. Anyone who has had a baby knows that at times the poop occurs with such explosive force that it shoots up and out of the diaper and along the back of their clothes. Like a volcano erupted within a onesie.

This time the explosion happened without the retaining effect of clothing. The stream of liquid poop shot out of her with such force it arced in the air and landed in the hall outside of her room. It was a rainbow of shit. It seemed completely improbable that a baby that little could produce such a force but there it was.

After a moment of stunned silence Husband and I both started laughing and the laughing grew to such a force of hysteria mixed with a weird pride at her launch angle that it filled the room. The laughter was so physical, my stomach tightening, my head becoming light that I was bent over, holding on to the changing table with one hand and my Daughter with the other so she wouldn’t roll off. Husband had to prop himself against the wall, holding his stomach, tears running down his face. We could not stop laughing, despite knowing the clean up was going to be hideously involved, as the hall was carpeted in off white carpet (not my choice, it was there when we moved in).

Daughter was just lying there staring at us in bewilderment. Who were these hyenas? What was this noise that seemed never ending? We eventually settled down enough to finish the diaper change job, do a quick clean up on the carpet, throw on some carpet cleaner to soak, and greet our guests as if there wasn’t a hazmat situation upstairs during their visit.

Diapers and dogs, plunging toilets, killing snakes and rats, throwing out the mold covered mystery Tupperware in the back of the refrigerator, the opportunities for experiencing the grosser side of life endlessly present themselves. There are some that are so gross I can’t bring myself to write about them (but I did them). Suffice to say that the treatment for a dog’s leaky anal gland . . . . never mind. Some things are just too much to even talk about.

But we do them.

We do them because we love them and we can’t leave them hurting or dirty or sick.

I have been astounded at how much I have been willing to do for my loved ones and my pets. Way beyond what the young me would have ever believed.

But I have also found there is one line I don’t think I can cross.

I told Husband that I will do almost anything for him as we age, but I will not change his diapers, if it gets to that point. We’ll have to hire someone. I told him start saving now for that person because I really won’t. I will trim your nose and ear hair, no problem. I will look at any mole on any spot of your body. I will sit beside you while you throw up if you want me to (he would never, so that’s an easy offer). But my poop clean up is now reserved for dogs only. Everyone else is on their own.

[Sigh]

That was supposed to be the end of the piece.

But it isn’t, because I know if it comes to that, I will do it.