Ph.D. in Vomit Studies

Any parent quickly learns to distinguish various types of cries: the hungry cry, the tired cry, and the I'm bored and tired and frustrated and no one is paying attention to me cry require vastly different responses.

One type of cry cannot be ignored: the cry of pain or terror or, more simply, help! That's the cry I heard the other night, and the fact that I felt guilty about my immediate response is a measure of my peculiar upbringing.

I was at my daughter and son-in-law's house last week to celebrate my granddaughter's birthday, but I cut my visit short and went home to battle a nasty allergy attack.  I didn't really get back to full strength until Wednesday.

But then my granddaughter got sick--just a little gastrointestinal bug. Nothing to worry about except for cleaning up the vomit. (Did she match her mother's record, I wonder? Once when my daughter was small and sick, she managed to vomit in every room in the house.)

So my daughter and son-in-law dealt just fine with the sick baby--until my daughter got sick with the same bug, followed very closely by my son-in-law. When both parents are overcome by upchucking, who will change the baby's diaper?

Grandma will, that's who. When my daughter called late Wednesday, I didn't hesitate to hop in the car--but even as I said yes, I heard the voice of my Puritan forebears: If you're always rushing to a kid's rescue, she'll never learn to do it for herself or How do you expect her to become independent if you'll always come when she calls?

In my mind I rehearse clever responses, but I wonder why I feel compelled to justify my actions. My kid needs help and I'm free to respond. Case closed.

But she'll never be independent says the voice in my head, which is ridiculous. My daughter and son-in-law are so independent and competent that you could parachute them into any godforsaken backwater in the world and within a week she'd be teaching the children to read music and he'd be running the power plant. Independence is not a problem here. The problem is too few hands to handle all the vomit, a problem I am eminently qualified to handle. I'm an expert in vomit. If they gave advanced degrees in vomit, I'd be summa cum laude.

Besides, I keep remembering all the ways my daughter helped me when I was sick. Sure, she cheered me and helped clean when I was recovering from chemotherapy, but I'm thinking of another time, years and years ago, when I was sick with some kind of bug that laid me out flat on the sofa and my adorable daughter decided I needed some help. She grabbed a big box of Cheerios from the pantry, toddled out to the living room, and poured out the Cheerios--the whole box.

On my back.

She was just trying to help! And you know, she did. And now it's my turn. Grandma to the rescue! Just don't make me eat any Cheerios.