Rebecca’s Spring Break (Part I.)

by Katrina on April 15, 2010

My friend Rebecca (not her real name) called as I was dropping my son, Jake, at preschool.

“Um, are you doing anything right now?” she asked. “Can you come check my head for lice? I don’t think I have it, but Ella does.”

“I’ll be right over,” I said.

She didn’t need to explain. Most families I know have had to deal with lice. My daughter has had it at least three times now.

Even in families where the dads take on a lot of household stuff, there seems to be a consensus that lice, like nail clipping, is mom’s job. Perhaps the dads don’t have the dexterity or attention to detail for nit-picking. Unfortunately, one cannot detect and remove lice from her own head. So like our primate cousins, we need other moms to help.

A half hour later, Rebecca and I were chatting in the sun on her front porch with a tupperware container full of different sized combs. She sat on a step below me so I could get the best view of her head.

I drew a vertical line a the comb and inspected her long, thick, glossy hair, then reparted it, over and over. I’d love to have hair like Rebecca’s, but it would be nightmare to get lice nits out of it. While I checked for nits, Rebecca told me her funny, terrible tale of woe.

“It started two weeks ago, when I got that lung infection. Remember that? Jason and I both got it. The cough was so bad it literally would make me pee–that’s why I couldn’t go to work. I was afraid I’d pee myself, Katrina…”

She had to take four days off that week, using vacation time when she ran out of sick time. That Thursday her husband, Jason, had to have a wart removed from his foot.

“It was supposed to be no big deal. A couple days of rest. But he ended up in bed with his foot in the air for four days…”

The next week their two kids, Ella (6) and Darren (3), were on Spring Break. Rebecca had planned to take the week off, but she hadn’t planned to miss work the week before, and she was behind.

“So I thought we’d just split the days but Jason was on crutches. He was in no shape to take care of the kids. So I missed that week of work, too.”

As I listened, I painstakingly drew rows through Rebecca’s hair. Every miniscule white spec caught my eye, but when I blew on them, they disappeared. If they were nits, they would stay cemented to the hair shaft.

By Friday, Jason was hobbling without crutches and Rebecca’s cough was gone. They decided to salvage the time they had left and visit a friend near Monterey for the weekend. Saturday, things were looking up and everybody got up early to go on a short whale watching trip. As luck would have it, the boat hit some unusually rough water. Rebecca and both kids started feeling sea sick. Within a half hour, 3-year-old Darren was throwing up. Then 6-year-old Ella started throwing up. While struggling to clean up the kids, Rebecca started throwing up.

“At least I made it over the rail. Darren and Ella were just throwing up all over themselves. It’s hard to explain the indignity, Katrina…I mean, there were people around us dressed nicely, and there we were, Barf Family Robinson.”

There was no way to get off the boat. Ella curled up in a ball and refused to move. The whole family hunkered down on the deck for the remaining two hours. Eventually Darren fell asleep in Jason’s arms. They didn’t see any whales.

The story should end here, with everyone getting cleaned up. But it doesn’t. Tune in tomorrow for Part II.

***

Love the blog but keep forgetting to check it? Why not sign up for the email subscription? (Look for sign up box on the upper right of the web site. Don’t forget to click the confirmation email after you sign up!)

{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }

Liz

too funny! laughed so hard i cried (and almost peed).

Reply

Gabby

These are the stories every Mom has and every Mom dreads. These are the stories that when you hear them you get flashes of yourself treading water in a deep dark storm with no ships in sight and you roll your eyes upward and just pray. All you can do is hang on and ride the ride. You know that one day soon, if you survive it, you’ll tell your friends and family about it and revel in the laughter and sympathy. I’d love to know the percentage of these stories that involve vomit (bet it’s high). I don’t know how women in the “old” days did it – survived. Then again, I guess plenty of them didn’t. They didn’t even name their children until they were a couple years old. Guess it’s all relative.

Reply

Sherri

I’m sure that you did not intend Rebecca’s story to be funny, but I found myself gripped with sympathetic laughter. Our family has had similar spells of serial adversity billed as vacations. Finding myself cornered between laughter and tears, I end up laughing while crying. I remember one episode when a lice scare was just the last straw for us, too. Fortunately, while Robi-combing my younger daughter, I was relieved to discovered that she did not have lice. Unfortunately, I was horrified to find that she did have a flea in her hair! Come on, fleas? Is that even possible? HA HA HA HA . . . ha ha . . . ha . . . sniff.

Reply

Leave a Comment

{ 1 trackback }

Previous post:

Next post: