Written the other day:
Lucky for me, Makayla did not wake up at some ungodly hour demanding I do things such as feed her and I was positive that today was going to be an amazing day. Period. I made coffee and Makayla said, “Feed me that coffee with your spoon like Maw Maw.”
“No way,” I told her, “that is something you do with Maw Maw. And when you start acting like a hooligan, Maw Maw doesn’t know it because great grandmas think that great grandchildren are pure and incapable of crime.”
She just looked at me and I said, “I’m sorry. Let me drink a cup of coffee. I’m still kind of tired.”
“Mommy, drinking coffee will make me think of Maw Maw. I miss her.”
So I made Makayla a very small cup of coffee.
“Put a spoon in it like Maw Maw,” she said.
When Makayla was little, my grandma would spoon mouthfuls of coffee into her. Makayla loved it. It’s their thing. My grandma and I have a “thing” too but not like that. Our thing consists more of life talks and perverted sexual innuendo. She is like a wizard.
So anyway, I watched Makayla sipping her coffee and I sipped mine and I felt a massive headache coming. I rarely get them but when I do, it’s possible that brain damage is being done. First from the pain, second because according to most, I am “strange.”
Anyway, I attempted to pop a few Advil and nearly hurled on the floor as I tried to swallow them. When it comes to drugging my body, I am capable of consuming inordinate amounts of alcohol but when it comes to pills, I have issues. I have a gag reflex that’s so sensitive, I have already accepted the fact that porn will never be an alternative to college for me. It comes in handy to only endure giving the minimal gift of unenthusiastic and brief fellatio during sexual encounters though. Makayla is used to watching and hearing me hurl or dry hurl since that is my initial response to many things, and gave me a sympathetic rub on the back as I recovered from my attempt at swallowing the Advil. It had ended up being hurled from my mouth to the other side of the room. Since crushing it up and snorting it would be impossible on account that it was a liquid form of pain killer, I went in search of something smaller that wouldn’t kill me when I tried to swallow it. I found nothing. I figured perhaps chugging huge amounts of water would cure me, thinking I might just be dehydrated. The thirteen cups of water I had drank the day before made me think that wasn’t the case, but I like to play it safe on things like that. So I chugged water and nothing happened and I decided I would spend the rest of the day being in misery. Makayla started following me around the house, claiming to be bored. I told her to go do something creative since that is my suggestion whenever she annoys me. She refused to do creative things and insisted I play with her. I told her I had a headache and she suggested I drink water and take a vitamin. I chugged some water to get her out of my hair but she wasn’t having it.
“Come play with me. Let’s do stuff,” she demanded.
“Makayla, I just want to lie on the couch for a while,” I told her, “go play by yourself.”
“If you’re going to be on the couch anyway, let’s watch TV,” she said.
“No. Go do something that will stimulate your brain.”
Apparently, Makayla’s idea of stimulating her brain is to sit a foot away from me and stare intently at my face. I have no idea why, but this annoyed me. After ten minutes of trying to ignore her, she started chattering. About nothing.
“I wish I had a dimple in my cheek like you, Mommy. Why do you even have that anyway?”
“It’s a genetic mutation,” I groaned, “go play.”
“I don’t know what that means!” Makayla yelled, “Mommy what did you say? I don’t know what that is! You have to teach me!”
Trying to teach a six year old what genetic mutation means when you have a pounding headache is not fun. After that fiasco, she wanted to know every single detail about her babyhood. She started saying random things and every now and then I’d be able to block it out but she’d put a stop to that by saying, “MOMMY! I know you aren’t listening to me. Pay attention to me,” while poking my cheek.
“Makayla GO PLAY,” I told her, “I don’t feel good. We have a lot to do today and I need this headache to go away.”
“Why do you even have a headache anyway?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t start getting them until you learned how to talk. Off you go. Shoo. Quick like a bunny.”
But then she was intent on knowing all the details of when she learned to talk. I wanted to smack her but I’m not a fan of smacking children especially when they’re expressing annoying curiosity. I decided Makayla was acting the same way she does every day and told myself to stop being an asshole. 97% of the time I am highly amused by her and prefer her company over anyone else’s other than Matt when he’s nude. I hopped up and told her we’d be running errands. She shrieked with a victory hoot and barged out the front door before I even had my shoes on. I had to go fetch her so she wouldn’t be stolen by a pedophile. The errands were awful. My headache was pounding, making it nearly impossible to focus on what I needed to do. Makayla’s chatter went on non-stop and I politely smiled and nodded and responded the best I could. After deciding her self esteem would not be ruined by her mother asking for some quiet, I finally said, “Makayla. Please let’s just be quiet for a few minutes. My head really hurts and it’s hot and I need to focus on my driving.”
She did a great job for at least thirty seconds before she asked if gross water can turn your skin brown. She wanted to know how shampoo was made. She asked all sorts of questions that I don’t remember. After I snapped at her, “Makayla, enough. Hush,” she waited for a few seconds and said, “Will I die when I’m a kid or when I’m old?”
Horrified at the idea of Makayla being dead, I kind of jumped. I wondered if she was capable of manipulation since she asked such a shocking question after being told to be quiet.
“You will not die until you’re are a super old woman,” I told her, “it will be probably at least a hundred years from now.” I am not certain it would be wise to tell Makayla that I have no idea when her death will occur. She is a pretty imaginative kid with a morbid streak. She’s the kind of kid who if you told her you have no idea when she’ll die, will not be able to sleep because she’ll be wanting to know exactly when and how it would happen.
“What if you die?” she asked.
“I won’t. Don’t worry about it.”
“You’ll go to Hell because you don’t believe in God. It’s OK to say Hell if you’re just saying that it’s that place. I really don’t want you to go there. I have bad dreams about it all the time.” She has told me this before, after being told this by someone she really trusted. She first told Matt because she was scared to tell me and then she told me. And she does have nightmares about it.
“That place is not real,” I told her, “No one goes to Hell. There are so many different religions and gods, no one is going to go anywhere bad just because they don’t believe in God.”
“Clint and Matt don’t believe in God either. So where will you guys go when you die?”
“Certainly not Hell,” I told her, unwilling to tell her I’m assuming we’d all become worm food and that’s it, “no one knows. But if there’s a Heaven, we all go there. Hell is a made up place.”
“Like Candyland?” she asked, “Like, it’s just pretend?”
“Yes. It’s pretend. Hell is a place that people made up just to scare other people.”
My headache was worse now and we suffered through the entire Bolton’s Tire nightmare with me managing not to snap at the dudes. I am very aware that Makayla observes me in all situations, especially difficult ones and wanted to teach her how to handle them.
We got home and I collapsed on the couch and put a cold rag on my head. Makayla stood by me and rubbed by cheek. I found this annoying but didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I told her I was going to take a cool bath. Makayla likes to sit in a laundry basket right next to the tub and watch me bathe, which always makes me uncomfortable. I strategically placed a washcloth over my bajingo and soaked. I decided to submerge all of my hair into the water in an attempt to cool off and help my headache. Makayla was chatting away and with my head under the water, I told her, “I can’t hear you. Wait until I sit up.”
She took this as her cue to talk louder. I ignored her so she sat on the edge of the bath-tub and continued. Before I could tell her to get down, she slipped and fell head first into the tub, elbowing the crap out of my neck. After a few seconds of violent splashing, I managed to sit up and get her out of the tub. She was laughing hysterically.
“Dang it, Makayla,” I said, “go play in your room.”
“No. I want to hang out with you.”
I made a mental note to seriously address her co-dependency and considered threatening her with physical violence. Since Makayla hasn’t received a spanking since she was three, I knew she wouldn’t take it seriously.
“Go to your room and play. Now.” I told her.
She wailed and stomped off to her room and stood in the door while staring at me. Her room is right across from the bathroom. When she saw I wasn’t paying attention to her, she sat down, popped her thumb in her mouth, and looked at me.
“Get your thumb out of your mouth, now,” I told her. She hasn’t sucked her thumb in over a year, except for when she sleeps. Even then, she’ll place a pillow over her head so no one can see.
She made a show of putting both thumbs in her mouth and I hopped out of the tub, dripping wet, got eye level with her, and said, “Enough. If you don’t cut it out, you aren’t going to play Mario for a few days. Go play and stop acting up.”
She started protesting, promising to be good for the rest of her life.
“Please Mommy!” she screamed, “Please don’t take Mario away! Give me another chance! Please!”
“Makayla I said IF you don’t behave I’ll take it away,” I said as I hopped back in the tub, “hush.”
“I would just DIE if you took it away! It would destroy my soul! I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed!”
“Makayla, GO PLAY,” I told her. She takes my threats like that pretty seriously since I carry through with them and I didn’t hear from her for ten minutes. As I was drying off, she waltzed into the bathroom and asked if I needed any help.
“No,” I told her, “go play.”
“I want to play with you. I already played. Now I’m bored.”
I got dressed and lied back down on the couch with a cold rag on my head. Makayla stood next to me and rubbed my face and offered to feed me grapes.
“I don’t want any grapes, Makayla but thank you,” I told her.
“Well can I have some?” she asked. I got up and the second I stood up, became horribly dizzy from my headache. I swayed for a moment before I sat down to get my balance back. Blasted kid, wanting grapes. I got her some grapes and after I lied back down and placed my rag over my head she said, “Can I have some juice too?” Dang it. I got up, this time slowly and fetched her some juice. I lied back down and she popped grapes into her mouth while she looked at me.
“Makayla, go do something creative,” I told her. She took that as an order to fetch books and read them to me while sitting on my knees. I was OK with it. She is the apple of my twitching eye.
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