What do you want to become ?
Whenever any of my children are down with bug or something regarding health my first instinct is to avoid the doctor. I am daughter of a doctor, so never visited doctors for flu and fevers. It is against my natural instinct.
More so, I am that mother who imagines worst, thinks of absolute bizarre things at such times. Thought bubble is full of all kinds of worst and wild possibilities. Those dark thoughts are rooted deep down in my mind but I never bring them in front of my conscious self. I never tell them loud to myself. What if fortune fairy gets a whiff. I want the illness to magically disappear.
I am also shit scared but when it comes to kids I calm the spouse, while he is edgy and itching to get the expert on board immediately I want it to take the natural course. May be his impatience affects me, to be able to show the concern, to show disappointment and hurt over the raising fever. I don’t want to give antibiotics unless it is absolutely necessary. I want to just hold the tiny being cuddled up next to me, I check her breathing, I observe their quiet version with mix of curiosity and concern. Reassure myself it is just seasonal bug she got from school. Tomorrow she will be back to her routine, taking her own time to get up for school. She will be waiting for me to return from work to help her with homework in the last hours of the day.
This time with my younger one when the flu lord didn’t leave her side for 2 days I was forced to take the dreadful decision to visit the doctor. After few failed attempts at getting appointment with aspiring big paediatrics I settled to go to regular, old one. There is something reassuring with regular doctors, they are predictable and unfashionable, yet reassuring.
Shuffling my meetings, calls and instructing the work about my possible delay I settle her in car with pillow in between us while my phone buzz with unwanted bank selling me credit card calls, work inquries and random job calls. Her tiny self keeps looking at me waiting for me to finish my calls so she can grab my attention. The moment I hung up the last call she asks me , “ are you dropping me at doctor’s and leaving me alone there ? “ with puppy like face in full emotional way. My heart just sank a bit and I told her “ Noooo, why will I do that ? I am never going to leave you alone anywhere. We will finish doctor and on the way back I will have you dropped home”. I get the fever is talking or she picked pieces from my conversation with my sister.
To lift her mood up I try to have a small talk and we discuss random stuff about school and I ask her what do you want to become when you grow up now? because while this question is common across all parents, answers keep varying with time for each child. Do you want to be Doctor? who treats everyone. She nodes at first and then gives it a thought and says “ is it ok if I become Police?” “do we have enough Police ? or should I just become Doctor?”. I tell her to not stress about it and we will decide later. It is too much of exhaustion on that tiny body due to simple fever.
She digs her head to the pillow between us for a moment and quickly gets up to ask me “ What do you want to become, mom ?” More than surprised, I am taken a back and don’t know what to respond it with. I tell her I have already become something, I guess. She asks me what? and I tell her may be an engineer, an entrepruner, an advertiser and a mom. I am not sure if I am answering her or to myself ?
Conversation doesn’t go anywhere she goes back to rest. I am not sure if the answer was satisfying enough for her or not. I dare not to ask or to wake her up. I stare out side car window deep grey clouds are forming in sky, sun is absent from the noon sky. Clouds are on the mission to create sombre symphony. I am sure soon the clouds will get tired and decide to change their path into musical rhyme of rain. Till then the wait is weighing upon us.
My hand is resting on her hot head and it shifts to her nose.
I wait for rain, for her head to get cold, for the answer “ who I want to become? “
