Autonomy and The Couch

I need alone time. 

Not a lot of alone time. I still register as an extrovert on those useless personality tests. But I like alone time. To think. To get things done. To do what I want to do. 

Maybe more than alone time, I crave autonomy. Some choice. Some freedom. Some power and control in my life.

But this isn’t about me. It’s about them.

My roommates. Four of them anyway. 

Tighe’s abandoned me for the week. He’s in Florida, then the Bahamas because “travel’s so important to what I do.”

Hmm, that’s funny. I thought it was so important to what I do, too, but I digress. Again. Can you tell I have a little bit of pent up resentment?

I guess I should not have been surprised late last week when Lou woke up with a fever. It was TOPS week at the kids’ school, after all. TOPS stands for Tired Old Parents Sports and it’s a doozie, to say the least. As Tighe so eloquently described it, it’s the week when the parents turn into high school athletes again and the kids turn into orphans. While the parents are playing in a double elimination volleyball tournament in the school gym, the kids are roaming the playground Lord-of-the-Flies-style. Unsupervised, unregulated, with little regard for structure, nutrition, or bedtimes.

It must be nice to have such autonomy. 

There are fights, injuries, hurt feelings, later-than-usual bedtimes, tears and laughter—and that’s just the parents. By the end of the week, everyone’s exhausted, fueled only by concession stand hot dogs and snacks and very little sleep. Which is probably part of the reason Lou got sick. 

He was devastated when we told him he’d have to stay home from the penultimate night of TOPS! He loves the freedom and the socialization, not to mention the 6th grade girls he prowls around with. And somehow, I truly don’t know how, every time I saw him that week, which was rarely, he had a new bag of Cheetos. 

And so, that morning, while the big kids were at school but Lou was immobilized on the couch, Tighe and I still had work to do. A sick, needy, whiny Lou is an inconvenience to say the least. 

So we hired nature’s best babysitter for him: the TV.

Since he’s been obsessed with boxing lately—like wearing boxing gloves around the house, which is funny because he can’t do anything with those gloves on, like eat, hold toys, or wipe his butt—Tighe decided to queue up the 1974 heavyweight boxing match between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. Every three-year-old’s favorite. 

And suddenly, somehow, all three of us watched it. The whole thing. All 90 minutes of it. I mean, I got up to make my coffee at one point, and Tighe had to field a few emails, but gosh, it was compelling. 

In other words, in an effort to entertain a sick child so we could each get some autonomy, we put something on TV and got so distracted that neither one of us moved. Though I did learn a little bit more about boxing. Like how long rounds last. And what a typical heavyweight strategy might be, round to round. And that at one point, Muhammad Ali winked at Joe Frazier, who was guest commentating just outside the ring. So that was a plus.

Anyway, despite the high fever, Lou recovered the next day and made a showing at the TOPS championship that night. Not that he watched it, he was busy doing whatever it is the kids do out on the playground. 

“What happens at TOPS stays at TOPS.” —Kid motto. 

We muddled through the rest of our weekend—soccer, lacrosse, rugby, a birthday party, the usual—but by late Sunday afternoon, Tess was not herself.

As in, feverish.

It’s important to note that by this point, Tighe had left for the airport for his very critical “work trip.”

Tess crashed on the couch and slept through dinner. As I leaned in to feel for a warm forehead, I smelled it, the foulest odor of them all. And groaned.

She had slept so hard that she peed on the sofa. And I don’t know what kinds of fluids she consumed that day, but it was a lot. 

This poor sofa. It could practically be a character in my blogs. It’s not that old, we got it the week before Lou was born, so three and a half years ago. Which is longer than most toys last in our house, I guess, and despite some strict ground rules when it was fresh off the delivery truck, it’s been through a lot. We even splurged on the one-year warranty and stain guard treatment, but it was no match for the onslaught of chocolate milk, pee, muddy shoes, vomit, dog hair, more chocolate milk, cheetos and taki dust, markers, and Sam. 

Like any good mom who craves autonomy, I carried Tess upstairs to her room, peeled off her soaked leggings and underwear, and helped her into bed.

I let her sleep in the next morning, a Monday, and while she and Lou enjoyed a leisurely bubble bath, I tried scrubbing the sofa. Again. And then I sprayed some Febreeze. Again. And lit a candle. And poured some essential oils into the diffuser. But for some reason, urine is the most stubborn of odors, so I went to borrow my neighbor’s upholstery steamer with some special odor-eliminating elixir.

With Lou’s pesky and totally unnecessary assistance, I spent almost an hour soaking and scrubbing and steaming that sofa! To the point that some of the stains, like 20%, disappeared! And the sofa only smelled like pee when I got really close and dug my nose into it. And who does that anyway?

But later that afternoon, as Tess napped in her own bed, she did it again. This time the urine flow woke her up, so she climbed out of her bed and into Lou’s. So then I had two mattresses that smelled like pee. And a sofa. There was also a fridge stench issue, but I think I resolved that with a fresh bowl of baking soda. 

Feeling defeated, I was craving the autonomy time that comes with each Tuesday morning. When all four kids are in school. And Tighe was still in Florida. So I knew I’d had the relatively fresh-smelling house to myself. I love those Tuesdays. 

So I was beyond disappointed on Tuesday morning when Sam reported a fever. I didn’t even use the thermometer, he was radiating heat, his face was flushed, and his eyes were glazy-er than a glazed donut. A high glazed donut. Mmmm delicious.

“Ok, Sam, you can definitely stay home,” I told him, draping a blanket over his lanky body laying on the couch. Yes, THE Couch. But a different cushion.

And he almost immediately dozed off into a restless fever sleep.

But Nate and Tess, not to be left out, also began moaning woefully. Nate had just inhaled a full bowl of cereal and two pieces of toast and Tess had just ordered a waffle from the housekeeper—you know, me.

They sure didn’t seem sick.

“My head kinda hurts and I just feel like crap,” Nate said.

“And I’m just sooooo tired,” Tess said, shoving her plate away and curling into a ball on the sofa. 

“Okay, but you need to get dressed to go to school,” I replied to her, sliding the waffle back in her direction.

“Ughhhhh,” she wailed and believe it or not, had the nerve to actually fall asleep.

“Tess!” I hate disturbing a sleeping child, but somebody had to stand up for The Couch. “Don’t you dare pee on that couch again!”

But she was already asleep. I turned to Nate and felt his forehead. He wasn’t nearly as warm as Sam, but it’s not like him to bow out of school. He doesn’t like missing school work or recess drama. 

“Fine, whatever.” 

I couldn’t deny that Sam was sick, so as long as I had one kid ruining my day of autonomy, I might as well have three. 

And those three held their fortification on The Couch for the remainder of the morning, while I woke Lou, shoveled some breakfast at him, and drove him to school. Three kids at home is one thing, but three kids and a Lou is another can of worms.

Eventually, I convinced Sam to take some medicine and sip some fluids while warning him about the newly established sanctity of The Couch on which he was sprawled. Not that he really had the energy to tarnish it. 

He was pretty impaired, so I was gentle and patient with him.

Not so much with the other two. 

Tess, definitely well and cured of the autonomy-stealing virus, kept feigning naps. Every time she and I made eye contact, she held it for way too long in the way that a guilty party does, trying to determine if they’ve been made. 

“I think you’re lying,” I told her bluntly while gingerly lifting Sam’s head so he could sip some water through a straw. 

Nate, on the far side of the couch, deeply engrossed in a book, blurted, “I think I’m lying.”

Sam and Tess turned to stare at him. Then at me.

Feeling three sets of suspicious/questioning eyes on him, he glanced up. And immediately realized what he said.

“I mean,” he stammered, “that’s not what I meant! I really am sick!”

“Okay, sure, whatever.” I had resolved that even if he wasn’t sick, he probably would be soon enough, so we might as well hunker down and let it ride. 

Eventually the books they were reading must have gotten boring because the three amigos banded together to ask the inevitable, “Can we have screens?”

“Um,” I paused with genuine consideration, “no. Not yet. You can have screens for an hour AFTER we watch something together that I want to watch.”

Of course anything I wanted to watch probably isn’t very kid-friendly, so I began googling “best documentaries for kids.” We might as well make this sick day educational. And slightly autonomous.

Let me tell you, there are so many good documentaries for kids! I scrolled through listicle after listicle trying to find something age-appropriate for all three and something that they’d truly be interested in. 

Nate loves history and sports. Sam loves art and science. And Tess loves fashion and… I don’t know, unicorns or something.

I found something about the Holocaust that had won a lot of awards, but it sounded a little too horrific for Tess. And she definitely wouldn’t enjoy the one about the vastness of the solar system that Nate and Sam would have probably appreciated. Also it was almost three hours long and I wanted something that would end before I went to pick up Lou.

Finally I settled on a documentary about poverty in Guatemala. 

Perfect. 

And for the most part, it was. 

It featured four American college students who immersed themselves in a tiny rural village in a jungle in Guatemala for four weeks. Which was pretty admirable considering that by the end of the month, they’d each lost 20 pounds, were covered in flea bites, and suffered all kinds of GI issues, one of which became dangerously acute. At any point, you know they could have whipped out their US passports and called it quits, back to the relative luxury that is America.

Nate and I both teared up watching these families struggle to put food on the table through only subsistence farming, which was often plagued by destructive floods and pests. Their kids were malnourished and many had to abandon their educations so they could help support their families.

“These guys get to leave!” Nate gulped, pointing at the Americans, “but these kids—this is forever for them. They can never escape!”

Sam, being Sam, didn’t say much. He was huddled on The Couch, still draped in a blanket, but he was watching. Or he was having fever hallucinations, it’s hard to tell.

But Tess. Because most of the movie was in Spanish and an indigenous dialect, there were a lot of subtitles, and Tess struggled to keep up.

I tried my best to read them aloud, but I was engrossed too, so sometimes I forgot. And she didn’t fully comprehend that I was reading them to her, so there was a lot of confusion.

“When I was a girl, I wanted to be a nurse…,” I read from the screen.

“You did?” Tess was incredulous about my non-existent career goals.

“...but I had to quit my studies to work in the fields…”

“Wait, why?” Her confusion persisted. 

“Not me, Tess! I’m talking about the woman on the screen!” 

I had promised/threatened to prompt them with some comprehension questions afterwards, but by the end of reading an hour-long movie script to Tess, I was exhausted. 

I got up from The Couch to retreat to the kitchen when I heard Sam gasping.

“Sam! What? What is it?”

But I already knew.

I rushed to the bathroom, grabbed the small plastic trash can, and rushed back to shove it in his face. My timing was perfect—at 40, I’m still fast—but in our mutual desperation, somehow Sam and I fumbled the trashcan and though most of the vomit did in fact land inside of it, some of it hit the cream-colored fleece throw blanket and, you guessed it, The Couch. 

Not a lot. Not enough to run to the neighbor’s and borrow the steamer again, but enough that I googled “new sectionals” that night. Let’s just put this guy out of his misery. He’s probably yearning for some autonomy.

That night, everyone was in bed by 7:04pm. Well, Lou, the healthiest one of the bunch, crept back down to watch some crime drama on network TV with me. I probably should have sent him back to bed or changed the channel—the morgue scene certainly elicited a lot of questions—but it was the closest I’d been to autonomy in several days.