Rabbits and Rockets

That year, the infamous April showers brought a nasty stomach virus along with the May flowers. The emergency department where my husband and I worked was overwhelmed with it, so it was no surprise when it showed up at our home. The older children handled it well and were back to normal in no time at all. Unfortunately, the same was not true for our youngest. Three year-old Ian did not handle it gracefully at all.

His lack of experience with illness prevented him from understanding the normal clues that precede vomiting, so he was pretty unsuccessful with making it to any designated throwing-up receptacles. This led to a whole lot of clean-up for me, and the only thing greater than the pain in my knees was the mountain of laundry growing in the utility room. Complete exhaustion forced me to play the ace up my sleeve. I bee-lined to the refrigerator for the single Tigan rectal suppository I'd stashed for just such an emergency.

I found it easily in the egg compartment where I'd hidden it, and its foil package shimmered surreally in the pale light of the refrigerator bulb. The Holy Grail itself would have paled in comparision.  I took it back to the couch where poor Ian waited.

Automatically, I switched into my best nurse persona and started a professional, yet age-appropriate, explanation.

"See?" I said, carefully peeling back the foil to expose the top of the medication. "It's shaped like a rocket and will dissolve into your body and help stop you from throwing up." I breezed over the "rectal" part, making certain I sounded confident and carefree.

My son looked at me as though I'd lost my mind.

"You wanna put a rocket WHERE?" he asked incredulously, his eyes narrowed and disbelieving.

I reworded the dreaded destination and added that it went "there" because other medicine would not stay in his stomach long enough to work.

His expression didn't change. "What's 'dissolve'?" he asked.

For a brief moment, this one stumped me. Dissolve is....dissolve, right? I floundered for a kid-friendly definition for only a fraction of a second and then it hit me. Surely no one HAD EVER or WOULD EVER come up with a more awesome definition than me!  I wanted to high-five myself or do some kind of end-zone celebration dance.

Smugly, I began. "You remember Easter? When we colored the eggs?"

Ian nodded, still suspicious.

"You remember how we filled a bunch of cups with water and then put those little different colored tablets in?"

Another nod.

"Well, those tablets d-i-s-s-o-l-v-e-d in the water!" I finished with a flourish. I'd nailed it!

For a long minute, my son, the last fruit of my womb, sat silently, obviously considering the possibility that this time his mother truly had gone insane. Finally, he put his hands on his hips and spoke.

"So," he asked indignantly, "Just exactly WHAT COLOR are you trying to turn ME?"

All that pride and self-satisfaction I'd been feeling disappeared just like that. No place in the Definition Hall of Fame for me. And laughing was out of the question; I couldn't add insult to my little boy's injury. Not just then.

I am pleased to report that the medication was administered without incident and Ian's vomiting soon stopped. He was back to his normal self, well...almost normal self... in no time at all. And while he still continues to hide himself in the bushes every Easter morning, he's completely given up the nestling-in-baskets thing and is no longer afraid to sit on walls like poor Humpty. Let's face it. He's WAY bigger than the other Easter eggs and usually gets found right off. Not a big deal.

As for me, my lesson's learned. Who am I to define "Easter egg"?




Originally created for the 2010 Annual Parenting Short Story Contest  06/08/10
Word Count: 650