Sorry About Your Shoes, Mom

It’s been a long couple of weeks at the Crandler house. Maggie’s been preparing to start a new job, I’ve been putting together a ten-page piece for a literary contest, the kids hand-made more than 25 Valentines each for their school friends and nearly everyone in the house has fallen victim to an ugly stomach virus. With everything going on I haven’t posted here in nearly two weeks. So tonight I poured a glass of wine and sat down to write. Unfortunately, the only story that came to mind is about vomiting. Weird, huh? I’ll do my best to make it funnier than it is gross, but if you’re about to have dinner, you may want to come back to this later.


I’ve written about Ben’s sensory issues here before, as well as his motor-planning difficulties. But unless you live with a kid like this, it’s hard to understand how those things impact your daily life. Haircuts and toenail cutting – perfectly mundane parts of most kids’ lives – were both monumental obstacles to be conquered for Ben (the toenails took years).

Vomiting poses a unique challenge. Ben can’t stand to be messy. At all. He’s been known to leave the dinner table to change his shirt if he spills water on it. See where I’m going with this? Vomiting = messy. And gross. And not at all predictable. It’s pretty nearly Ben’s worst nightmare. In fact, it’s so upsetting for him, his motor planning tends to break down as well. If Ben is vomiting, it’s likely you’ll have to hold not only the trash can for him, but also his head in the right position to hit the trash can. Oh, and you’ll probably have to find a way to control his hands too so they don’t fly around and inadvertently knock the trash can across the room. Helping Ben vomit is not for amateurs. Or sissies.  You should have seen me trying to explain all this to Maggie the other day when Ben was sent home after vomiting at school.  Maggie is unflappable like no one I've ever met, but I swear I saw the tiniest hint of fear in her eyes.

But my favorite Ben vomiting story involves a spectacular rally right at the end. (That’s right – I have a favorite Ben vomiting story. Is that weird? It is, isn’t it?) So anyway…

This particular day, I managed to hustle Ben to a tiny powder room in my house when I could see he was about to barf. By “hustled” I mean I put my hands under both of his armpits, picked him up off the floor and carried him to the bathroom holding him in front of me at arm’s length (have I ever mentioned my freakish physical strength?). Once in the tiny powder room, though, we didn’t quite make it to the toilet. Ben started to vomit and lost all control. He threw his head back and pretty much sprayed the entire room (including me) with an impressive volume of barf. When I finally managed to reign him in I wrapped my arms around his shoulders tightly.  We were facing each other, foreheads together and I was holding his head down with one hand.  All he could really see was our feet. It was then that he yelled at the top of his lungs (any ability to regulate his voice or anything else at this point was gone), “MOM! I AM SO SORRY I BARFED ON YOUR SHOES!” And I burst out laughing. I was covered head to toe in Ben’s barf, as was the powder room, but all he could see was my shoes. So for him those shoes were all that existed.

Maybe this isn’t a story about barfing at all. Maybe this is a story about remembering not to miss the forest for the trees. It’s true that sensory integration dysfunction and motor planning problems still impact our lives after all these years, but that was an impressive show of empathy on Ben’s part. See how far we’ve come?

Forest vs. trees. What a spectacular forest.