Bethany WELL

Warning: This post will contain some graphic references.

Memorial Day, 2008.

Theresa and I took the kids out to the playground in Montville, NJ. We met up with the Kangs and their kids. Our kids are running around and playing on the playground slides and climbing the jungle gym bars and playing in the make-believe cars and boats.

And then Richie utters the dreaded words. “I have to do poo poo.”

All they have at this playground is a port-o-potty at the back of the parking lot. I take Richie over there and tell him that I am going to hold him. But he’s pretty apprehensive because he doesn’t have his potty seat that sits on top of the regular toilet seat. So, despite my assurance that I will not drop him in the murky blue water at the bottom of the port-o-potty, he assures me, “Poo poo’s not coming.”

So, defeated, I return to the playground with my son and allow him to play in the park. I know my son. And I know that he has an adult-like ability to hold his bowels for quite some time. So, I figure he might be able to hold it until we get to lunch. Later on, even after an attempt by my wife to take him, he still refused.

Still later, he is sitting near one of the slides with Aly when Tom asks Richie, “How come you’re not playing?”

“Because I don’t feel good.”

“Why don’t you feel good, Richie?”

“Because I need to do brown circles.”

I promise you, we do not refer to poop as brown circles, but I guess he judged that Tom might not know the word, “poop”. Either way, I knew he wasn’t going to enjoy himself. I knew this boy needed to do some poop brown circles.

So I drive him to another part of the park (where all the ball fields are) and eureka(!) they have an open bathroom. I take Richie out of the car and excitedly tell him that they have a toilet in there.

“With two seats?”

Ugh. “No, not with two seats.”

I take him in and hold him up as he poops in the one-seated toilet and he does pretty well (<– euphemism). I got a little bit of pee on my elbow and the view wasn’t one to speak of, but I was glad because now we can go back to enjoying the rest of our day.

We return to the park and he plays a lot better than before, but before long, it is lunch time. So, we head over to a McDonald’s with a PlayPlace. And we are enjoying our meal and feeding the kids chicken nuggets. After about an hour of running up and down the various towers and slides, Richie speaks the dreaded words to Theresa, “I have to do poo poo.”

But, hey, we’re not talking outdoor playground port-o-potty… we’re in McD’s. So, we’re good to go.

Theresa walks over to get Richie’s shoes. And that is when I saw… the clutch.

Richie grabs the back of his pants and clenches his teeth. I thought he was just fighting it back. But he wasn’t. If he was in a fight, he lost. He lost big time.

Fast-forward (trying to maintain the PG rating here) about 7 seconds.

I am in the men’s bathroom with my son standing in the sink. [Now, I'm all for reducing waste in these bathrooms, but a few paper towels would have come in handy right about then.] With no paper towels to speak of (and someone using the only stall with toilet paper in it) I proceeded to clean my son’s pants (the underwear was toast), his feet, his legs, and his -uh- privates… with nothing else but my God-given hands. Thank the Lord they kept up with their hand-soap supply.

I’ve done some pretty nasty filthy disgusting challenging things as a father. But, this was by far the worst. And as I stood there drying my son’s pants with the automatic air dryer watching my son stand naked from the waist down in the sink of a McDonalds, I thought, “Oh the things I must do for my son.”

Later on, as I was driving home, wearing Tom’s college lacrosse team’s shorts and a borrowed T-shirt, I thought about God. I thought about how when I talk about God forgiving my sin and making me clean… I probably don’t do that whole process justice. It wasn’t an innocuous process. Rather in order for God to clean me of all my brown circles crap, he needed to roll up his sleeves and get a little dirty.

[Jesus] laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

~ John 13:4-5