Rude Awakening

02 May 2017

One would think with how much I hated the hospital I would try to avoid going there at all costs. The smell is disturbingly sterile, fake with undercurrents of sickness and masked death. Even to this day it stings my nose and gives the triage nurse false readings on my heart rate as it quickens. Everything is plastic, including the doctors with their “bedside manner.”

Being four years old I didn’t know it was called bedside manner. I thought it was creepy how they plastered smiles on and spoke in benign tones no matter how damning their prognosis was. “Yes, of course, it’s only a scratch, but I’m afraid the foot will have to come off.”

It’s my sixth time being admitted to the emergency room in my short four years, and I feel just fine, though I can tell my mother is more worried than she normally is when we come here. She declared we were going to the ER when my temperature spiked at 104 degrees Fahrenheit and wasn’t budging back down. Complicated words are tossed around by my mother and medical staff. As an adult I know their main concern was Meningitis.

At the time I was focused on how odd the Mickey Mouse wall decals looked. They didn’t belong, carelessly stuck up at random intervals to give some semblance of cheer and normalcy, like you were back home in your room with your toys. But this place is not homey. It’s white, smells, and the bed is made of a material that makes farting noises when I scoot off it.

Despite my negative opinion of the room I play with the toys while the lady Doctor and my Mom discuss things. They run some more tests, check some more things, take blood, and then announce they want me to pee in a cup.

I immediately think how odd that is. How absolutely gross and abhorrent. Urine belongs in the toilet, not a cup. I remember my potty training! And what did they want that for anyway? For some reason my whole world is rocked by this. The reality of what I know unwound. My four year old mind cannot comprehend or accept it. My blood? Sure. My pee? Uh uh. My mother crouches before me in front of the toilet with the cup, demanding that I pee, and it all gets worse. Even at four years old I find this humiliating. I scream, cry and steadfastly refuse. “Why? I can’t! I don’t have to go!” I claim.

A handful of popsicles, many glasses of water, and nine hours later I still haven't peed. And I’m not going to. Now days I almost look at this as an achievement. My first “challenge accepted” moment. Unaware of other measures they could take to literally take the piss out of me, I lose the battle when they decide to catheterize me.

My mother has to leave the room, telling the staff she’d punch one of them if she has to watch them do it. I don’t recall the placement or removal at all, only that I cried.

Afterwards I feel just fine. When my mom returns I am sitting on the bed, that is not a bed, and playing with the hospital toys. Then the Doctor who administered my catheter walks by and I freeze. I remember her. Still do. Curly blonde hair, too curly, like she was in an 80’s hair band. Her facial structure is frail and pinched, and her eyes a few shades bluer than the color I see blind people with on the television.

My eyes narrow, and I lift an accusatory finger at her as she passes the doorway, and I declare venomously to my mother, “that lady there? That lady poked me in the butt.”

And promptly return to playing with my toys.

Turns out I didn’t have Meningitis, just a fever as stubborn as I was. It hasn’t occurred to me to ask my mother how much money I cost them with my many hospital visits, most of them my fault. There were the stitches from throwing a rock straight up in the air and it landing on my forehead, the time I ran the opposite way as my mother and jerked my own arm out of the socket, my mix up between Sudafed, and cherry candy (my favorite), and when the phase of me refusing to blow my nose led to thirty tiny balls of Kleenex getting stuck in my nasal cavity. My less than desirable behavior didn’t stop there. I was a hard headed, stubborn brat.

The first time I really argue with my mom I am two and a half, and my parents have decided to try to take me off bottles. Again. I have quite the attachment to them, obviously as I’m two and a half and still using them. She fixes me with an earnest stare, relaying her confidence in me.

“I know you love your bottles, but you’re getting to be a big girl now, and big girls use sippy cups.”

I have no interest in being a big girl or using stupid sippy cups. I’m not pleased. I yell at her, cry, clutch my current bottle to my chest as if it’s the only thing in my little world that matters as she repeatedly asks me, “don’t you want to be a big girl?” Eventually my mother leaves me be, probably because she needs to take a break from my tantrum. It doesn’t matter to me. I’ve won. I have my bottles still. For a time.

A time is a day, maybe two. Enough time for her to brainstorm her next plan of attack. She settled on capitalizing on my imagination. I wake in the morning, demanding my bottle of milk that I always get with breakfast.

I point at her and declare very decisively as always, “I want. Bottle.” Instead I get a very serious mommy getting on my level and informing me that the bottle fairy has come and taken all my bottles away to give to younger kids that need the bottles more than I do. The fairy left me a present in their place, a brand new Lion King cup. I stare at it and then at her, I sniffle and cry, and finally I take it. If the bottle fairy had decided this, it must be for the best. Why did I believe a fairy over my mother? Bottle fairies were magic, my mother was not. I sip on the milk in my new cup, printed with characters from one of my favorite Disney movies, but I still think sippy cups are stupid, and I’m still not pleased.

Years later I found my favorite baby bottle with the Pepsi logo on it buried in our storage, and despite already knowing my mother’s bottle fairy story had been false, I still felt a beastly sense of betrayal.

As an adult I still feel that sense of betrayal, though now it’s predominantly accompanied by amusement and also a sweetness that my mother had thought to keep the bottle I was so in love with. When I recall this memory I don’t think I was being difficult, but I know if you ask my mom she would say otherwise. Of course, there were times I can admit I was being difficult.

I’m seven years old and the only one of my friends who hasn’t gotten their ears pierced. The first time I chickened out much to my Dad’s frustration, but this time? This time I am determined. I’m at Claire’s of course, where every little girl gets their ears pierced, right in the entry for any passerby to see. My mom is there, my sister, and one of my best friends.

I’m sitting in the chair, trying not to squirm as the lady uses a marker to make dots on my ears so the piercings are even. I’m scared shitless of how badly it will hurt.

Reassurances from my mom, friends and sister have been babbled at me for days, but I’m not buying it, and neither do my ears. Perhaps it was my expectations that it will hurt so badly, or maybe my ears were just sensitive, but my young self wailed, regarding it as the worst pain. I cried and was upset with everyone for lying to me, even more upset at myself for crying in public.

Two weeks later when my mother announces it’s time to take out the initial piercings and replace them so my holes won’t close up around the studs, I cross my arms, dig my heels in, and prepare for battle.

She tells me it won’t hurt, but it will if we put it off any longer. I don’t believe her. She had lied about the actual act of piercing being painless, she was probably lying about this too! Trying to dupe me into it!

We pester, we snap, our voices get louder in the space of our carpeted living room, the dark green walls doing nothing to soothe the atmosphere tonight. She’s getting more frustrated, impatient, exasperated, but I’m not backing down. I get into her space, a little spit fire of anger, like an ankle biter dog who doesn’t realize how non threatening it is. My cheeks feel hot, and I ball my hands into fists as I use all the power in my lungs to yell. “No! You can’t make me!”

My mother does make me, not with force but with words. I don’t have her stamina and she wins the argument. It doesn’t hurt when she replaces the studs, she doesn’t gloat about it, and we return to our night as if nothing happened. If an outsider was to witness this, I imagine they would think it odd she wasn’t still fuming and I wasn’t sulking. It’s not odd though. My mother and I knew each other by now. She knows I’m pushing boundaries, that I argue to argue, I’m stubborn, and I’m insistent on dancing to my own beat. I know she is only doing what she needs to, that she cares about me, and that she’s also stubborn.

My grandmother always called it the mother’s curse, that one of your children will be just like you. My mother was that for my grandma, and I was that for my mom, which my grandma found very amusing. Through middle school and high school I remained a cheeky smart ass, curious and purposely overstepping boundaries just to see what would happen.

I wanted to map out the world for myself, to discover my place in it, and to learn from my own mistakes instead of the stories of my parent’s. My mother was much the same growing up, which is probably why we butted heads so much. It took us years but we eventually developed a rhythm, learned how to communicate, and when to push or not.

In my adult life I have yet to have an argument with my mother the way we used to, and my accident prone days are (mostly) behind me. My mom has always reminded my sister and I how thankful she was to have two daughters who were their own people. Despite how much stress I caused her growing up, even being dubbed my mom and dad’s rude awakening, she’s always been proud of my individuality.

I will be forever grateful for her patience, and that she never tried to stuff me into a box of expectations that weren’t me, no matter how much I pushed her buttons or that I made emergency room regulars.