Vomit

The other day a friend was over, again singing the praises of Fly Lady. Then two nights ago I was checking out all the links on Andie's blog and saw that she had was also connected to Fly Lady. So I had a look.

She still is annoying.

There was a section where fly-lady-wannabess wrote in their thoughts on how to complete the sentence:

Nothing says love like...



Nothing says I LOVE YOU like giving your loved ones a clean and peaceful place to wake up in and come home to every day!
Nothing says I love you like a clean kitchen table.
Nothing says I love you like "a made bed to crawl into at night.
Nothing says love like clean and mated socks!
Nothing says I love you like a clean fridge full of healthy food.
Nothing says I love you like a clean bed.
Nothing says I love you like a bed that has been made.
Nothing says I love you like having the front porch light on when you come home late.
I love my family by cleaning the toilet each week with a smile on my face. As I clean it I always think that if someone gets sick that week and needs to hang out by the toilet, then it will be clean for them.

And so on. There were at least a hundred of them.
Reading them made me feel guilty.
I don't clean my house as an expression of love to my kids. I clean it and nag them into helping me because it needs to be done. Love's got nothing to do with it. Not. a. blessed. thing.

But the last one, the one about clean toilets, brought back a memory. (Details are sketchy, but this is how I remember it.)
It was Easter 1999 and I had been on my own for a few months. Dealing with the separation, working part time and caring for the kids was about all I could handle. Keeping our house (all 4200 square feet of it) clean was beyond me. I kept up "my" jobs, but the ones Mark usually did ended up getting neglected. The main one being the bathrooms. He used to do them. Thoroughly. Especially the toilets.
Anyways, it was Easter 1999 and the kids and I were at the lake with my parents. Max ended up getting the flu. He tried, I know he did, to make it to the bathroom, but he was not successful in his quest. I spent 2 days cleaning up puke puddles.
Near the end of the second day, I was feeling peckish and had a feeling I was coming down with the same virus. Not wanting to be confined to the cabin with the flu, I packed the kids up and headed home.
I made it to the bottom of the mountain. Just outside Yarrow I pulled over and threw up in the ditch.
The hour long drive home seemed to take 60 hours. I left a message for Mark to pick up the kids as I didn't think I'd be able to look after them for 24 hours or so.
I just pulled into the garage when I felt another heave coming on.
Stumbling into the house, I made my way to the bathroom and knelt next to the toilet. And as I'm emptying the contents of my stomach, somewhere in the back of my mind I remember thinking, "It smells like pine sol in here. Hey. This toilet is clean. "

Mark had let himself in and cleaned the toilets.

Then, last night, I read a few more chapters of the book Million Tiny Pieces. I got to the part where he describes all the vomiting he does as he goes through withdrawal from his drug and alcohol addictions. Lordy. Had no idea there were so many vile ways to describe the contents of one's puke.

I went to bed thinking about bathrooms; specifically toilets. And vomit.

This morning after I took Max and Drew to school, I gathered up the recycling items in the garage and prepared to take them to the curb. While bundling the newspapers, I heard Clint thump at an excelerated speed down the hallway right above me.

I assumed the phone rang and he rushed out of his room to answer it.

I was wrong.

When I got back inside I could hear him in the bathroom. Ralphing. Wretching. Forcibly removing his stomach contents up through his mouth.

I went to check on him and there he was, in his boxers, looking all sick and vulnerable and pasty.

I notified my work and said I'd be in an hour or so late. I had a sick son.

I made my bed and invited him to sleep in my room. Nothing says I love you like a "made bed". Then I stripped his bed and threw all the bedding into the washing machine. Nothing says love like a clean bed.

And while he was dozing, I sanitized my toilet to within an inch of it's life. If my boy was going to puke again, I wanted his foggy brain to say, "Hey, wait a minute. It smells like pine sol in here. The toilet is clean."

Because nothing says I love you like a clean toilet.