Another Note On Love

Yesterday I got thrown up on.

I picked her up, asked her how she was, told her I adored her, gave her belly a loving tickle. She giggled and then, there it was, half digested macaroni and cheese and huge chunks of red grapes, sliding down my chest, imbedding itself in my freshly washed hair. I felt the slimy, smelly mixture move down my shirt, getting caught inside my bra, sitting there, wet and heavy and undeniably gross.

I tried to run her to a sink, but we didn't make it. Instead she continued to leave a trail all over the classroom rugs. When we had finally reached the sink, she had nothing left inside her, and so I stripped her down to her pull-up and washed her off. She was shaking. Her bottom lip trembled. I hugged her. I told her everything would be alright. I gently pulled half chewed grapes out of her baby fine blonde hair. I showed them to her. We laughed.

Half an hour later, after we had found her new clothes, after her mom had come to take her home, after I had scrubbed down the rugs and moved the rest of the children to another room, I started to clean myself off. I changed my shirt, I rinsed my hair out, I hosed myself down with extra baby wipes. The scent still clung to me.

A few hours later, I texted the friends I was going to meet when I was done and told them I would be a little late on account of being puked on. They were both completely tickled and disgusted. When I finally arrived, one of them opened the door and asked "Weren't you so mad? Did you just want to smack her?" I laughed accordingly.

Yet as I followed her down the long hallway to the apartment stairs, I thought about how truly NOT mad I was, not annoyed, not impatient, not even really all that disgusted. I thought about the look of repulse my friends give me when I admit to them that part of my job is potty-training, that I spend part of every day changing diapers, and also the look of confusion that follows when I tell them that it's really not so bad. I thought about the way the most gruesome of acts pales in comparison to the power of love.

Because the truth is, it's not that I have a strong stomach for these kinds of things, it's that I would do anything for the people I love. It's that taking care of them, for better or worse, is just a way of showing them that I love them. It's that it's so easy for me to love them.

I think then about standing in that small dilapidated room, spiders marching up the peeling grey paint on the wall, her dress and skin soaked in the spilled Iodine. I think of his trembling hands and the way his breath smelled of cigarettes and cheap Indian beer. I think of the look of hesitation in his eyes.

And I think of the way I had spent all afternoon driving with her from hospital to hospital, trying to find someone willing to see us. How I had run up and down the stairs of this hospital asking anyone and everyone for help. How it was the one and only time in my life I can remember not being afraid to ask such a thing. How so many people walked past without even acknowledging me because I was white, a woman, an outsider. How that was the first time I had felt such a thing. I think about how none of that stopped me because I knew what I had to do. I knew I had to help her.

I snatched the needle and thread from him. He didn't protest. In fact, he looked almost grateful and relieved. I put four stitches into her leg, gently tugging after each to make sure it was tight, feeling the resistance of her flesh as I placed the pointed needle into it. I tied it off. I placed a bandage over it. We paid our forty cent doctor's fee and left, and it was only hours later, sitting in the back of a rickshaw, dehydrated and exhausted, that I realized what I had just done, what I could do, what loving my friend made me capable of.

I had been fearless. I had been strong. I had been brave. I had been all of those things that I never experience myself as being. My love for her allowed me to be that person. Loving her allowed me to forget all of the pettiness of my self doubt, my fears of being judged, my worries of acting appropriately. Loving her saved us.

And I think of that day when I am changing dirty diapers, wiping snotty noses, washing throw up from my hair. I think of the way my love of people, for people, makes me stronger than anyone would guess.