Chapter 13: Germs

Should I have a kid? Idk, let’s find out!

The birthday boy has a cold, so does his mother, and his party’s tomorrow.

He’s turning one, they’d hoped he’d be better in time but the time has come and the snot’s still running.

But they really, really don’t want to cancel. The in-laws have flown cross-country to be here. They’ve rented a ball pit. It’s the big O-N-E! Who wants to be the parent who cancels their kid’s first birthday party over a sniffle? They can’t and they won’t but— as their text to us details— they will take all precautions:

Mom won’t handle any of the food.

The Birthday Boy will keep his distance (mildly heartbreaking).

In fact, the Birthday Boy won’t play in the pit until after all the other children have had their turn (severely heartbreaking).

All that said, if we don’t feel comfortable exposing Ava to the b-day baby’s germs, they totally get it, they completely understand.

Okay, good. We now have our off-ramp, which is important because…

Ava also has a cold.

Sort of. She’s had a little something for about five weeks now. We thought she’d be better in time, but the time has come and the cough’s still coughing. Especially at night. The same way her sneezes are adorable and hilarious, her unmitigated coughs are helpless and gutting.

Helpless. That’s the feeling. When she drinks from her bottle and tries to breathe through her stuffy nose, she sounds like a piglet. We’ve done all we can to alleviate the symptoms.

There’s the notorious snot sucker, a blue rubber bear we’re to put up her nostril, squeeze, and then on its inhale, it extracts her nose goo. But as soon as she sees that bear coming she enters NO WAY Mode, swatting at it, throwing her head side to side, and going limp like an overcooked noodle ‘til she slides off our laps.

We run a humidifier on max, put menthol drops in a hot bath and then for good measure, steam the whole bathroom and baby by running an even hotter shower. All three of us love the steam shower, actually, because the dismal truth is…

All three of us have a cold.

I had a little something for a small stretch, then Eleanor had a lot of something, then my little something returned while Ava’s illness presented itself in various ways throughout.

It’s been quite a stretch, but it’s been our cold. Our cold feels manageable. Quaint, even.

We share everything here in the Baby Bunker. I once had the audacity to eat lasagna in front of her without offering a taste. She launched herself at me and tried to eat my bite straight from my mouth, using her mouth.

I’m not afraid of her germs. There’s something about knowing somebody from their literal Day One — as far as I’m concerned, she’s as pure as stardust. Even when she’s crusted in snot or has beans between her toes.

And we’re definitely not raising a Purell baby. She’s building a microbiome that is nothing short of spectacular. She frequents the shoe rack like an all-day buffet, trolls the floor for dustmites to chew on, and once ate an ancient blueberry from beneath the dishwasher. Recently, she discovered the rug pad beneath her nursery carpet and now visits regularly to bite off the fluff, like her own personal salt lick.

Our kid’s a super cute bag of germs, is what I’m saying, but do we want to tangle with these germs? That’s the question— our neighbors’ thoughtful, comprehensive paragraph was texted to us 90 minutes ago, there’s no doubt Birthday Mom and Birthday Dad can feel us deliberating, the clock’s ticking.

My gut says yes. My gut says there will not be a single gathering of babies, toddlers, children, and elders where somebody isn’t either ill, about to be ill, recovering from an illness, or perfectly healthy but about to get hit by a car. That’s just, that’s how it’s going to be. If we skip this one, see ya never, we’ll skip ‘em all!

Eleanor agrees with my gut. But her head says no. Right on the other side of this birthday party, I’m leaving (on a jet plane) to visit family while Eleanor stays back with Ava for nearly a week, the longest stretch of solo parenting either of us has had to do since Ms. Stardust was born. If Eleanor gets re-sick, or Ava gets sicker, that will, quite simply, suck.

Damn. She’s right. And the guilt I’d feel if this worst-case scenario played out while I’m 3,000 miles away is, quite simply, not worth the risk.

I draft a text to the Birthday Mom, offering all apologies, our full transparency, a request to come by to drop off our gift (thoughtfully purchased and wrapped by Eleanor, who’s always on it) and some dates in the not-too-distant future when we can all get together for a playdate instead, with everyone healthy and well.

I don’t send the text. I sit on it, while the three of us take a walk to the playground, where she licks the swingset, sucks on a wood chip, and gnaws on the slide.

On the way home, we see Birthday Mom driving down the street, her mom in the passenger seat. She smiles and waves. We smile and wave back—caught in broad daylight, unrequiting her text.

I think I should just go, I blurt out. Ava has a cold—she shouldn’t be mingling, that’s a fact. But it doesn’t preclude me from putting on my party hat, cheering on the edge of the ball pit, and singing loudly, out of tune. I’m making too much sense, and Eleanor agrees.

But if I go, and I pick up some cool new virus, then I bring it back home—

Enough. We should just all go, Eleanor concludes, and she means it, I can tell.

I draft a new text, thanking Birthday Mom for her candor, noting that Ava’s also battling a little something so we’ll take all the same precautions, but we wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Saturday rolls around, we arrive to the party and there’s that ball pit, sitting in the California sunshine, a thousand times more inviting than I’d imagined, screaming, you made the right choice!

Before ball time, it’s lunchtime— we sit Ava down in her portable-lounge-dining chair, keeping a healthy distance from the party’s center, and serve her a sandwich, deconstructed. Immediately, so immediately, Birthday Boy crawls over.

She regards him, he regards her. Then he grabs a slice of her cheese and squeezes it with the confidence of a man who is now One, before returning it to her like the tiny gentleman he’s always been. She then eats the cheese. They go back and forth over this plate of charcuterie in this way—him holding, her eating—until there’s no doubt that we’re all in the same boat. And then everybody who is two-and-a-half feet tall and under, Birthday Boy included, crawls into the ball pit to celebrate the day.

Should I have a kid? Idk, let’s find out!