Dear Honey, this is your Mother speaking.

Thank you so much for the delicious dinner you made for your father and I last night. It was also so thoughtful of you to call me at 6:30 this morning to enquire about the state of our gastrointestinal health.  You went on to share that there may have been something in the food because your husband was suffering from the gastrointestinal version of Hiroshima. I immediately grabbed your father and woke him up screaming, “Dear God we’ve been poisoned”! He jumped out of bed in his whitie-tighties, hair standing on end, screaming Where?! Where?!?

I got your father calmed down, poor nervous soul that he is, and started a full morning of second guessing my every intestinal twinge for symptoms.

Your text message later in the morning: “Poor Marmot – he threw up so hard he had to go directly to the shower”.  A lengthy phone conversation followed discussing where to buy new bath mats and hand towels. Somehow I ended up on the phone with Marmot, advising him to exchange his boxer shorts for briefs stuffed with paper towels, for increased absorbency, in an effort to save the remainder of the bath linens his parents gave them for a wedding present.

Then your call few hours later- asking about the medicinal properties of  7-Up vs. Gatorade? I had to ask. “Really Honey, why are you calling me for this? Aren’t you invested by about $50k into a nurse practitioner program?” And my darling Honey informs me ….  “Well yes Mom, but it’s in women’s health – I specialize in crotches, not assholes”. 

By afternoon you too were home from work and spending quality time on the toilet. The next phone call … well I can’t even describe the phone call.  Please, just note: Aloe needs to be completely peeled before being applied to any irritated orifices.

The last text of the afternoon: “Code Brown, send reinforcements!” So being the loving mother that I am, I dispatched Left Brain to deliver a bag of Flushable Moist Wipes and Gatorade – but with strict instructions – “Do not go in, do not slow down, do not even make eye contact! We can still be infected”.

Your father called me after “the drop”.  He had thrown the bag of supplies into the snow drift in the front yard from his moving car.  “It looked like a hunched over bow-legged troll shuffled out into the yard to get the bag as I was driving away, is there some homeless person staying with them?”

I love you darling, but next time I’ll cook.

Queen B.