Catastrophe struck at the Moll house

Sometimes family updates come in a brief post via Facebook or text message. Sometimes family events come in more detail. My oldest son, Matthew, an ER doctor in the Wichita, Kan., area, shared this one last week. I think parents -- at least those who've had more than one child -- can relate. Please pardon the somewhat graphic details.

Catastrophe struck at the Moll household.

Before you read on, be warned that this is a tale of unimaginable tragedy and loss of innocence and, at the same time, survival in the face of nearly insurmountable odds. It's also an account of the perfect storm and the unlikely odds that led to this near-cataclysmic event.

The story begins with a telephone call ... a very routine one made each day as I leave work. I called my wife, Velvet, to let her know I had left the building, and would be home soon. I got no answer but soon received a return telephone call from her. As I drove down the highway, all I could make out on the other end was the distressed cries of our infant daughter, Gwyneth, her mother in the background attempting to console her. I answered multiple times, but without a response from her mother. Certain that this was one of many ill-timed dials on the part of my wife coinciding with some minor drama leading to a preoccupation with the youngling from whence the ruckus was emanating, I hung up the phone.

Not three miles down the road, my wife again rang, this time the tone of her voice foreshadowing the horrific tale she would tell. The simultaneous dismay and fury noted in her tenor as she bypassed any pleasantries to utter those first words confirmed my suspicion that this was no everyday event.

In order for others to appreciate the sheer devastation this calamity caused us, I must first expound the improbable confluence of circumstances that came to pass just minutes before that fateful phone conversation.

1. Timing: Nothing can account for perfect timing, but this much can be said. My wife is a nurse and, by definition, the possessor of a nursing bladder. That means that in the early evening, after arriving home to a still-nursing infant and busy kindergartner, voiding can wait, at least for a couple of hours. But, sometime immediately prior to 6 p.m., even that nursing bladder, which was last emptied just after morning coffee, would have to be unburdened.

2. Freedom: Seven and a half months of an infant demanding the embrace of our loving arms and, finally, she is sitting, crawling and even playing on her own, if only for the briefest of moments. She is not her brother, who was content to sit and crawl on the floor, sometimes for hours on end. Gwyn has been accompanying us to the head for most of her short life. Not this time. Having awoken from a nap, she would sit on the floor, content, allowing for five minutes of blissful solitude in the bathroom. No crying ... not a peep.

3. The Weather: Usually a dry and inhospitable season, the end of August, the culmination of weeks of 100-degree weather and dry spells that rival the Sahara, this year has been wet ...very wet. Today, there are thunderstorms, and lightning, and thunder ... house-rattling thunder from nearby strikes of lightning.

4. Kindergarten Toughness: Gabriel, usually very rough and tumble and often known to take a spill that ought to sideline him for more than a bit, has abraded his knee. This occurred not today, but yesterday. A bruise or a sprain would not subdue him, but this abrasion has shed the most minuscule amount of blood. He will not survive without a Band-Aid, and he cannot walk ... can barely limp. He cannot assist in watching his sister.

5. Our Good Eater: Gwyneth is not only sitting up, but she is eating solids and teething. She puts everything in her mouth and eats nearly everything we offer, an affinity that her brother did not share at her age. He ate three or four foods (literally) for years, and almost never put anything in his mouth. There is a kitchen cabinet full of cleaning supplies (to this day) that was safe from him because he never so much as conceived of putting them in his mouth, mostly because they were not orange and fish-shaped. Baby-proofing has already begun with Gwyneth, because we already understand that nothing will be safe from her. She is into everything she can reach.

6. A Most Unusual Dog: Lola (aka Beanie) is our pampered, 4-pound, 10-year-old Yorkshire terrier (fufu dog). Like all terriers, she is fearless ... at least of geese, deer, rodentia and sundry other wild animals that we know of. What she fears, however, might comprise a longer list. Number one on that list is Gabriel. He has chased her, pulled her hair, antagonized her and generally turned her into a nervous wreck from the moment he could first locomote. But Gwyneth is not her brother and, despite the PTSD of Gabriel's toddler years, Lola will approach Gwyn, lick her in the face and even curl up next to her for a nap. Today, Lola is keeping Gwyneth company on the floor.

Lola is also unique in that she suffers from chronic and recurrent pancreatitis, an affliction that requires us to provide her with a prescription, low-fat, low-carbohydrate canine puree. This blandest of fares, her only sustenance, produces a parched, nearly odorless excreta. Although this beast, of whom we are so fond, is not prone to accidental depositing of dung indoors, the consistency of her droppings lends itself to expeditious decontamination of the floor on such occurrences.

Of what possible importance is the consistency of her stool, and how does that relate to her list of phobias, you might ask? Well, when she is scared, she shakes, quivers, paces and occasionally vomits. When being chased by her tormentor, she runs in circles around the kitchen island and adjacent hearth-room furniture. But, she doesn't just run. The dog, our firstborn, becomes a furry PEZ dispenser, scurrying across the floor like an antelope scampering from a lion, all the while dropping Milk Dud-sized, desiccated bits of excrement across the wooden floor.

But, you might ask (because perhaps you see where this is going), Gabriel can't chase the dog because of his knee, right? Right ... except ... THUNDER. Lola is afraid of thunder ... makes her shake like a leaf, and she refuses to go outside while it is within earshot. It also "upsets" her stomach.

What, you might ask, happened as my wife left our baby dearest on the hearth-room floor to go the bathroom? BOOM!

What she found upon returning five minutes later might rightly be called a "shitastrophe" (not to be confused with the "poopocalypse" described by another Facebook poster whose Roomba ran through his retriever's wet, stinking pile of manure, turning it into a brown replica of the Nazca lines). There lay Gwyneth on her stomach, holding several turds, pronated in a pile of shit ... not the scant, dry, almost inert puffs usually produced by our 4-pound flea bag, but a huge, putrid, mephitic jumble of solid and runny shit. In her hands, on her clothes, on her knees, where she had obviously crawled through the mound as she investigated ... there she laid, content as could be, as the sheer horror of the situation sunk into her mother's consciousness.

I cannot imagine her reaction. I wish I could have seen it; although my amusement at her dread, as the reality of it materialized, may have been tempered by the angry outburst that surely followed.

There are no words to describe the utter dismay this must have caused my beloved, as she picked up our daughter, fresh steaming excrement squeezing between her fingers, and whisked her off to the bathtub, bits of turd falling off her clothes. These are the times you need help -- a third hand -- and I wasn't at home. Instead, she was forced to yell for Gabriel to get her a towel, soap, paper towels ... as he limped, unable to assist in this disaster abatement.

His only contribution ... to tattle on the dog after the fact, "Mommy, Beanie SHIT all over the floor!" His kindergarten teacher would be proud of his ever-expanding vocabulary and grasp of letter sounds. "Shit starts with the letter 'S.'" ... I'm embellishing here.

As Velvet regaled me with her disgust at the bits of poop floating in the bathwater, I was unable to overcome the irony of her simultaneous abhorrence of excreta and personal predilection to frequent fits of flatulence. The "queen of crop dusting" herself has been known to gag to the point of vomiting in a patient's room over cleaning a soiled adult undergarment. I can only imagine that she was holding back her lunch while at the same time attempting to avoid her contacts falling out from the watering of her eyes. I cannot fathom the number of times the bathwater was purged only to start over again, her OCD driving another round of "rinse and repeat."

It was somewhere during this conversation that two thoughts struck me, one simultaneously opined about by my wife: Had she "sampled her find?"

There was no "poo-stash," nor was there any gritty drool. No fibers hung from the ridges of her single tooth. Maybe, just this once, she knew better than to "use all her senses to investigate" as she does with all other things.

But my wife had heard it, that odd utterance she had never really heard before from our daughter, as she approached the scene of the tragedy. Was it a sound of disgust? We will never know but have only to forever contemplate the absolute repugnance of the thought, remembering it each time she samples peas or Lima beans. Oh, the humanity! Innocence lost! She will never be the same!

Then one more thought came to mind, an attempt at consolation for my wife, who was still pissed at the dog, the situation, the mess which she had only begun to clean up after ensuring the cleanliness of our beautiful daughter.

"You have to laugh at this," I said. "It's really quite funny."

It was too soon ... WAY TOO SOON!!!

Randy Moll is the managing editor of the Westside Eagle Observer. He may be contacted by email at [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author.

Editorial on 09/07/2016