Single mom and child showered with fairy dust!

I have just gotten over a week of being sick, sick, sick!  (Basically I was as close to the flu as you can be without actually having the satisfaction of saying, “I have the flu”…which is actually not that satisfying…).  In any case, a fairy sprinkled fairy dust in our household while I had the flu.  That’s right.  How do I know, you ask?  Well, I was basically glued to my couch for an entire six days and you know what my eight year old did?  Everything I asked her to do!  She got me water, she got me Gatorade.  She went into the closet to get extra Kleenex boxes.  She said she’d be happy to eat whatever was for dinner – and she did.  She got ready for bed without prodding, her forehead crinkled with concern for me. She finished her homework immediately after coming home from school each day.  And she let me sleep – even on Saturday!  And when I would wake up from my phlegm-ridden haze, she’d say sweetly with furrowed brows, “How do you feel now Mamma?” (I love it when she calls me ‘Mamma’).  Bet you want the number of that fairy now, don’t you?  What a wonderful change of behavior; we are in a new stage, I thought to myself. 

Ha ha. 

By Monday, I was still feeling a little slow, but now not as ill as the previous few days.  And you know what happened? The fairy spell had run out.  We spilled right back into the usual pattern…mom, I can’t brush my teeth because this is my favorite Scooby Doo episode…I’ll do my homework later…is there anything else to eat…I’ll only go to bed if you come in twice to tuck me in and we can talk more…do I have to go to bed…in a minute, in a minute, in a second, mom… I can’t because…

As you can imagine, this got me pretty frustrated.  What had happened?  I was just about to blow my lid when I looked over at her and noticed something.  She was sitting and watching TV in her normal way – on her head on the couch (yes, like Mork from Ork)…and she was smiling.  The furrowed brows were gone.  As were the crinkles in her forehead.  No more worried looks in my direction.  Mommy wasn’t sick anymore.   And she was totally carefree, as a kid should be.  All was right with her world once again.  To her surprise, I gave her the biggest hug and smoochiest kiss possible.  I told her I was really impressed by how good she had been when I was sick.  Then I turned off the TV and told her to go brush her teeth.

Tags: mommy, motherhood, single mom, single mother, single mothers