Grammys Unseen
Mykala and I participate in what we call “awards season” during the dark days of late mid-winter where on Sunday nights there are Hollywood and entertainment industry awards shows. It would be more aptly called “have some fun toaster-oven food and watch parts of a live event while reading.” The latter description has been accurate for a few years. This year, however, was quite a bit different. The Grammy Awards were on, Ess was in her Björn, and we had finished up “Grammy Pancakes” (see, gold records look like pancakes!). Poor little girl had just blown out a diaper and gotten a bath, and was looking adorable in her fresh, clean jammies. Mykala tuned into what can only be called a “momstinct” or a premonition, and was cuddling Ess particularly closely when our little baby girl started making sounds we hadn’t heard her make before.
In an event that I have since called Vomitorium 2015, our daughter emptied out her stomach into our sink in a heart-breaking cyclical succession of cuteness, throwing-up, and confusion. It was impossible to tell her what was going on, and all we could do was take turns holding her. In a smart investment in all of our futures, we gave up and went to bed, Ess in her carseat so things would start going the correct direction, which they eventually did. My Google searches for the evening began with things like “brio play table” and “taggies hippo” and ended with “breastfeeding after vomit.”
As you can imagine, we saw vanishingly little of the awards, I saw some of AC/DC perform, which was, well, that happened I guess.
As Mykala and I experience these events of parenthood for the first time, things like spitting up, vomiting, getting sick for the first time, getting cut, falling, one starts to understand that you’ll always worry about your child. For a brief instance this morning, when I was at work and Ess and Mykala were catching up on some much-needed sleep, I didn’t hear back from them immediately after I sent a message, and I found myself spiraling into panic. What if Essie has not simply a flu bug but a vaccine-preventable disease? What if she and Mykala are at the hospital? What if it is pneumonia? Wait, no, she was vaccinated against that. What if they need me right now? That kind of worry, that spiraling, is the kind that you don’t really expect until it happens, and then you start to understand the emotional depths and heights of parenting.