I remember when my youngest was about five and he suddenly became sick to his stomach. He ran to the bathroom and quickly put his head over the toilet bowl. I got a clean wash cloth and ran it under the cold water and held it against his forehead while he emptied his stomach into the bowl in fits and starts. When he was nearly finished he turned his little head toward me and said “Were you trained for this?”

I thought of all the ways a Mom, even a brand new one, all of sudden seems to acquire an entirely new skill set, somewhat resembling a grandmother/nurse. The fact that it seemed odd to my son made me think about how amazing it is. After a flash, or many flashes, of intense labor and delivery pain, a selfish teen turned irrational twenty something incredibly becomes a protective, caring parent for a small infant, without taking any courses or getting some type of license. Things that our Mom or grandmother used to do come flying out of our memories exactly the moment they are needed. Somehow the next generation manages to get enough healing solutions to their smallest problems to carry them forward into adolescence, where they can begin caring for themselves. This moment made me think how special all that generationally passed on healthcare truly is. Our glycerin on boo boos to make them stop pulsing, mud on bee stings, calamine lotion on almost everything that itches, and hydrogen peroxide on any cut that needed cleaning….. because we couldn’t google anything in those days. You had to be confident, so you were! Maybe not so bad a solution.