The Call

Yesterday as I was down doing laundry, I heard the phone ringing. By the time I had made it upstairs, it stopped. Then my cell phone started to buzz. Before I had even picked it up, I knew: it was the Kindergarten calling.

Fantasy: I answer the phone. "Hello, is this Lilia's mother? We're just calling to tell you what a great kid you have. We've never seen such a fascinating child."

Reality: I answer the phone. "Hello, is this Lilia's mother? We're calling to tell you that Lilia has bad diarrhea."

Because of course the only reason a day care or preschool calls in the middle of the day is to share unpleasant news. Ninety-five percent of the time, your child has diarrhea, has vomited or has a fever. Maybe all three.

When I first went back to work six months after Lilia was born, the calls were pretty much a weekly event. I started reaching for my bike key the moment someone told me that the day care was on the phone. She got everything . . . and I got everything. Gastroenteritis three times in two months. I lost ten pounds that I couldn't spare, and colleagues started looking at me a bit strangely and asking me if there was something wrong. And then there were the mornings when we didn't even make it to day care, when Thorsten and I stood over the changing table looking at the reading on the thermometer, swearing softly and trying to figure out who could afford to take the day off this time.

To be perfectly honest, our experience with constant illness in the first half-year of daycare probably did contribute to my decision to stay home longer this time around. So far Johanna has been pretty healthy . . . . maybe my immunity got boosted so much with all Lilia's little sicknesses that Johanna's been reaping the benefits through my milk. Who knows? At the moment, since I'm home, calls like the one yesterday devolve into the minor nuisance rather than the major disruption category. When I go back to work, though, I suppose we will start back in the casino of childhood illness, playing another hand in the game of puking poker. C'est la vie.