I am going to be sick. Reader discretion advised.

Charlie threw up yesterday. It was a big boy pile all over the red, gold and blue rug at the front door. It contained recognizable bits of food and an acidic smell. When he was a baby he would "spit-up". Spitting-up is on the fringes of endearing. Throwing up is a whole different ball game. Spit-up was containable to a small cloth designated as a spit-up rag that I draped over my shoulder when burping the little guy. Throw-up cannot be contained. The spit-up wasn't too offensive either perhaps even sweet smelling, especially when the milk was Mommy's. Spitting-up for me was manageable. I've tried putting it out of my mind, but now I have to face it. Throw-up is one of my worst fears. To clarify, it is other people's throw-up which frightens me. I thought it might be different given that Charlie is my own son. I don't mind changing his diaper, but I am extremely uncomfortable changing other kid's diapers. It is to the point that I don't even want foreign diapers disposed of in Charlie's diaper pail. I will take them outside to the trash. It completely disgusts me.

I came in from outside when I heard Jill's dad screaming. Jill's mom and dad had just returned from dinner with Charlie when it happened. I rushed in and saw it there on the rug and bounced my eyes away from it like when you accidently see something when you're changing in the men's locker room at the gym. Charlie's vomit made me cower. I tried to act like a man. I tried to put it out of my mind. I was in such a mental battle that I don't remember the details well. Someone took the rug away. Another person wiped Charlie's face with a cold wet washcloth. Charlie held on to me, and I held on to him. In that moment we were holding on to each other. The father and son relationship was blurred.

It all started for me when I was just a kid. I remember sitting in a cold church basement during Sunday School. I was in the back row near a heavy plastic divider curtain. I was tipping my chair back. There was a girl sitting two rows in front of me. She was one of those pale mute girls waiting to blossom. She is probably a runway model now. The way the chairs were set up in a semi-circle, I had a straight line of sight to her profile. I studied her. Her hair was stringy, straight and dark. She was wearing a plain black dress with half sleeves. The dress had white lace on the chest. She reminded me of Popeye's girl, Olive Oil. I noticed her face becoming impossibly pallid. She shifted around in her chair and looked from side to side anxiously. I wasn't so interested in the lesson. I never really was. That's why I sat in the back row.

It was like a horror movie. All at once her head dropped back so that her face was parallel to the basement's drop ceiling. I looked up too. The white ceiling tiles had rusty water stains on them. There was an awful bubbling sound, like a full sink when you run the garbage disposal, before the unimaginable transpired. I nearly fell backward when the geyser erupted from her gaping mouth. I didn't know yet to turn away. It sprayed the ceiling. On its way back down it covered her face and her ashen skin, her black dress and her white lace. Poor girl, she was thinking of other people even in her sickness. She didn't want to hit anyone else. Reaction was swift. There was some screaming. The teacher scrambled and hid behind the green felt board. The sound of reverberating metal filled the air as the folding chairs scuttled violently across the exposed cement floor and children ran for cover. My stomach dropped. I felt something rise in my throat. It was more intense when I looked. I sprang from my seat and holed up behind the accordion room divider. I waited there, temples sweating, heart pounding, until my stomach slowly began to settle back into place. "Fresh air!" I heard a voice shout. Someone opened a window on one side of the basement and an exit door on the other. I was caught in the cross wind. The smell sent me to my knees. I fought it off hard. I tried to think of anything but bacon grease left over in a frying pan, but that's all I could think of. I felt my face getting cold. I unbuttoned the top button of my white dress shirt. I must have been there for some time. When I got up and looked on the other side of the curtain an older man was wiping down the chairs and a pile of cat litter soaked up what had made it to the floor.

Charlie is better now. We spent last night throwing and catching a ball together. He can't catch very well yet. It was more like I was throwing the ball at him. I felt bad. He was standing in front of me in nothing but his diaper. I kept tossing the ball to him and each time it would hit him in his big tummy and bounce off. About the time the ball fell to the floor Charlie would bring his arms up from his side to catch it. He giggled when it his stomach. It was a game to him. Charlie throws the ball two handed, but backward over his head. He stood between Jill and I. When I wanted him to throw the ball to me, I told him to throw it to Mommy.

I asked Charlie if he wanted to go on a bike ride early this morning. He replied, "Bike ride. Go. Helmet." So after throwing on a fresh diaper and a pair of gray sweat-shorts, I lead Charlie to the front porch where my Marin hybrid bicycle stood propped against one of the pillars of the three arches that make our long narrow house less like a double wide trailer. I won that bike from a drug store raffle. Jill actually registered me for the drawing. I am not kidding when I say she was jealous that my name was drawn. It is the only prize I have ever won besides the free weekend at the timeshare place in Breckenridge. Jill is always entering things hoping to win big. I don't waste my time. I think stay-at-home moms might enter raffles. Not me. Jill is trying to get me to participate in focus groups. Marketing companies will pay to get my opinion. I signed up and got a gig right away, but I got a call back saying they didn't need me. I took it personally. I also felt strange when the man who registered me over the phone asked my employment status.

He said, "So how would you describe your employment status?"

"I don't know?" I said. "I stay at home with my son." I was sitting in a leather chair at Panera Bread eating an apple. The apple was puny. It was the size of a plum.

"Oh. Good for you."

That's what I say when what I mean is "Good it's not me in that position."

"I enjoy it." I said. "I chose to do it." I said, making certain he knew I was not unemployable.

"Would you say you are retired? Self-employed?"

I think the guy was trying to avoid giving me the homemaker option. That's a manly thing. Self-employed requires some element of profit making. I am certainly not unemployed. I'd be travelling more often if I was retired. Maybe the best title to describe me is manager. I am Charlie's manager. Though when he says 'need' all the time, I feel more like an assistant to a harried executive. "Need! Need! Apple juice! Down! More! Hold you! Silky!"

"No, I'm not retired." I say.

"So you're self-employed?"

"Not really. I don't operate a business."

The phone was silent while we both avoided it.

"I guess you should just put homemaker."

"Homemaker then?"

"Yes. Homemaker."

That was that. I said it. It wasn't so bad. I should have rethought it though. I'm certain the overwhelming majority of people signing up for these studies are homemakers. The marketing companies are saturated with homemaker's opinions. What the companies of this world really want is a hard to get candidates. But hard to get candidates are the demographic with jobs that pay money. I made another mistake by saying I was Caucasion. I usually claim my Native American heritage.

I worked for a home improvement company who asserted they were giving a patio room away. It never happened.

I pulled Charlie behind me in the bike trailer I borrowed from my brother.

At Starbucks, Charlie and I waited outside while Jill, who drove the car, went in and bought our drinks. A small boy was sitting with his mother and Grandmother at a table outside. The boy was talking, but his language was indiscernible to me. I found myself not wanting Charlie to have playmate who can't talk. I think they'll devolve him. I introduced Charlie to the boy, but I didn't unbuckle him from the trailer restraints. I encourage Charlie to use his words. He's been pointing lately. I think he picks it up from kids at church. He fell asleep on the bike ride. It was a beautiful morning. We discovered a new part of the Highline Canal trail winding through Greenwood Village. The bike path was mostly packed gravel. About a mile in, after hearing my tire ping, it occurred to me that loose gravel could pop up and hit Charlie, in addition to dirt and water.

I talk to Charlie every once in a while on the rides. Up a steep climb I say, "We're going up a hill. You have to push it up the hill."

In response he says, "Push it! Hill!"

Now he recognizes the incline of the land, the slowing down of the pace, the choppy pedaling which causes the bike trailer to lunge and sputter and my labored breathing. He knows hills. So when we are going up a hill now, he says, "Hill! Push it."

I respond by saying, "That's right, we're going up a hill. You have to push it."

Along the trail, deep into Greenwood Village, the houses get bigger and farther apart. Some houses look like castles, some look like farms. We stopped to watch a horse eating hay behind a white fence. I dismounted my bike to lift the cover from the trailer. My bike fell down. Charlie said "Happened?" I said, "What happened? My bike fell down."

We watched the horse. Charlie said, "Tail."

I whispered, "Be quiet and listen." Charlie whispered, "Listen."

"What do you hear?" I asked.

"Hear," he replied.

A rooster crowed. Charlie's eyes widened as he searched for the source of the sound.

We ate breakfast together at the pancake house. We shared a generous ham and cheese omelet and three buttermilk pancakes. Before the food came out I removed the gluten free pancake display from the clear table stand and inserted two animal flashcards at a time on either side. The first pairing was a toucan and a giraffe. The second was an orca and a Komodo dragon. The third was a lion and an orangutan. He could name the giraffe and the lion by sight. He called the toucan a macaw. He calls most birds macaw or robin. Charlie's red croc shoe fell to the floor. The woman next to us used her foot to push it out of the isle and under our table. She left before we did and she told me about what she had done, but I already knew. Charlie spotted a pig with glasses and a rooster on the fireplace mantle in the restaurant.

When we got back home, I got out the alphabet flashcards. I thought the boy at Starbucks might have rubbed off on him. He was 100% accurate with his letters. We are starting to work on phonics now.