It's Better to Have Loved and Barfed...

Posted September 07, 2007

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Birdy and I are on the futon together, considering life's ghastliness. We're lying on old beach towels. "I think," Birdy says, thoughtfully, "that you barf because your belly..." she pauses here, thinking some more. "Because your belly's too...full of barf!"

Indeed.

And here's the thing: I once wrote about my fear of barf and barfing and learned, thanks to an inpouring of comments, that the technical name for this condition is not barphobia (as one might colloquially assume) but emetophobia. You can Google and Wikipedia it, you can chat about it on forums where people council each other about what to eat in Mexico and Thailand (sterilized gauze bandages) and boast about how many decades it's been since their last twinge of nausea, and, if you like, you can join IES, the International Emetophobia Society, and attend meetings where, I'm guessing, you can nibble saltines and sip ginger ale and avoid everyone and bloop lots of hand sanitizer onto your palms without even needing to be surreptitious about it. It turns out that I have suffered from only a rock-bottom low-grade form of this fear -- characterized by moderate hand washing and only a slight excess of curiosity about whether cars are pulled over to the side of the highway so that motion-sick passengers can puke out of their windows.

And now, well, I think I might be kind of over it. I mean, yes, I noted at a birthday party that The Girl with the Bad Boundaries stopped French kissing my children only long enough to announce that her little brother was home throwing up. And yes, I was not pleased about this. ("Norwalk," I whispered to Michael, like the sociopath that I am. "Twelve to twenty-four hours: our kids will be barfing. Pinky bet." Blaming is not a useful preventative, I should mention here. Nor is sticking a mental voodoo doll with the pointy pins of your dread and irritation.) And yes, fifteen hours later, when I heard Birdy cry suddenly in the night, I was briefly awash in panic. (Do you know your own child's particular vomit cry? I do.) And yes, it was yucky and bad -- but that's really just how barf is, right? It was okay; we did what we always do -- which is what you just do when you have kids: we managed.

Michael and I, under such circumstances, turn into silent, labor-dividing robots. Michael strips the bed; I peel off saturated pajamas. Michael starts the laundry; I run a bath. Michael shakes baking soda on the mattress; I wipe the floor with Mrs. Meyers geranium cleaner. Every now and then one person gestures vaguely with the sweep of an arm to indicate to the other the vast extent of their coping territory: Barf dripped down the entire flight of stairs from bedroom to washing machine! Barf on the box spring! Barf in your own hair like a terrible barfy wig that has been Crazy-Glued to your scalp for the rest of eternity!

But do you see the real problem here? The problem called "What About Birdy?" Your poor kid is shivering and miserable, longing to be clean, cuddled, and comforted. And instead you're in some kind of adrenaline-fueled marathon of barf and chaos and germs and barf management, stooping to pat her on her head and mumble vague reassurances while the tub fills (and then washing your hands for the fourteenth time in three minutes, trying to decide if the towel you're drying them on has or hasn't already been contaminated with vomit spores).

Poor Birdy. I knelt in front of the bath and combed barf out of her hair and then wondered what to wipe the comb on: A washcloth? But then what, when there's barf already on the washcloth and floating in the tub and on every surface everywhere? It was so futile and Birdy was so miserable that I briefly considered crying and/or having some kind of actual tantrum, but instead impersonated a parent who is capable and calm. And that was that -- I mean, she slept the rest of the night and woke up in the morning full of frail tenderness, wanting to kiss me ("Can I? Here on your forehead because of germs?") and hunker down with picture books and talk about barfing. She threw up only once more, which involved her whispering -- I'm not making this up -- "Excuse me," and then leaning across her father's legs to barf over the side of the bed into a bucket on the floor. "What are we -- in some kind of Southern play about gastroenteritis?" I said to Michael, and Birdy couldn't wait for Ben to get home from school so she could tell him. "Benny!" she said from the kitchen couch while the rest of us ate dinner, "Benny, do you know what happened?" "Birdy," he sighed. "Birdy, yes. Don't tell me again." "Benny, I said 'Excuse me,' and then I spat in the bucket and then I barfed in the bucket. Benny! I barfed because of all the barf!" "Birdy, you barfed because of germs." "And because of barf, right Benny?" And Ben -- Ben who would never end up getting it himself this time -- laughed and relented: "I guess barf really is why you barf."

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It's Better to Have Loved and Barfed...

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by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

It's Better to Have Loved and Barfed...

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