My kids have been sick for the last couple of weeks. A veritable plague house are we. It has been late night nose wipes and frenentic two am temperature checks, dreading the way the LED screen lights up bright red to indicate a major fever, thereby casting the whole of the darkened room into a sort of hellish pell-mell glow. It has been finding new and inventive ways to hide multiple medications in food, and upon losing ground, resorting to all sorts of untowards types of bribery so they choke down the Tylenol and Advil combo.
Somewhere between the phlegmy coughs and earaches, your mind starts to fray and wander. An intense anxiety starts to come over you, driven by the unsettling silence that has overtaken your home. In a bountiful world of children’s laughter, shrieking with joy, and even unholy tantrums, silence remains the most horrific thing to occupy the space.
You start to think about how the poison could have entered your home. You take on the blame, maybe as patient zero (but for you, it was just a bit of nasal discharge, because you have one of those hardy immune systems that the professionals speak of.) Or maybe you were weren’t liberal enough with the Lysol wipes and the handwashing. It could have any number of small decisions made in error, fueled by sleeplessness or lackadaisical notions. Not here. Not me. Not us. We will be fine.
And then, if you are sleep deprived enough, those strange anxieties open the door to allow intrusive thoughts to enter.
What if they never get well again? What if this is a sign of something worse to come? What if the failure of their tiny bodies to fight off these every day ills is indicative of an inherent weakness that is just waiting to manifest itself later in life? As a tumor, a cancer, an illness beyond reproach?
What if, god forbid, this kills them?
Those thoughts are usually fleeting and tempered by the more rational self, who makes an appearance after a third cup of coffee and a cold shower. After all, we are in a First World Country. We have access to free health care. Surely we are smart enough to take them into the doctor before we pass the point of no return? Your brother is a doctor for goodness sake! We can manage this, just as we have every other trial parenthood has thrown at us.
Even writing this down now, first by hand, and then transcribing it at my desk, I am morosely amused how the guilt is singular in nature. The percieved blame one takes is yours to shoulder alone. But the moment rational thought returns? Suddenly we are going to manage it. We are a partnership that will weather any storm.
Parenthood is inherently a guilt-based economy, and a solitary one at that. We, and by we I mean I, would probably do well to remember that I am not alone in this journey.
All the same, the fear and guilt and eventual rational thought passes and the world returns to the somewhat tilt-a-whirl-gone-wild experience that defines parenthood. It passes, and somewhere along the way a fever breaks and a headache recedes; a cough lessens and an upset tummy is settled. And all we are left with is fleeting memories of what the last few days have entailed, curtailed because autopilot has deemed that this is the best way of ensuring your sanity remains in tact.
It has been a very, very long few weeks. Me crying at improv during our ‘Compliments Circle’ was a clear indication that I had fallen back into my old ways of closing myself off to ensure survival, and any amount of kind words, especially in regards to my caring for others, was enough to break my stoicism.
You are strong for other people because they need you to be strong. It does nothing for your own self, aside from giving you a few more grey hairs.
My youngest, still a baby in my eyes although by legal and technical standards, actually a toddler, and almost out of that stage if we’re being honest, had it the worst. A sinus infection that resulted in five days of intense fever, and another two of mild fever even after antibiotics were introduced. He had it bad.
During the best of times, he is attached to me like a buoy in a storm. At the worst of times he will climb onto my lap and refuse to leave unless physically pulled off. I don’t mind, truly, although I wish we were in the financial position where part time daycare were an option so he could experience more socialization and realize that, hey, mom isn’t the only game in town. Nevertheless… Sickness seemed to bring some new level of attachment disorder into the mix. When he had the energy to move, every other word out of his mouth was “huggies” or “kisses?”, and he would wrap his little hot arms around my neck and cling on for dear life, as if hugs were the only thing sustaining him at that point. If I was out of sight, even for a moment or two, even if I told him what I was doing, a little voice would chirp “Mommy?” and repeat it, much to my husband’s chagrin, until I either answered from the three feet away I had gone, or reappeared in his line of sight.
A week of Mommy? Huggies? Kisses? on repeat can be stressful at the best of times. This broke something in me. Not a desire for parenthood, no, not at all. My children are air, and I happily drink in every breath.
But dammit if I didn’t ask myself, at least once or twice, Who the hell would I be right now if they weren’t in the picture? If everything else were the same, who would I be?
Boring as fuck, I suppose.
I suppose the point of this whole saga is to explain that while I have been away and seemingly struggling with what is necessary to get the third Code book published, my children being dreadfully sick has given me a strange sense of renewed purpose outside of them. Outside of the motherhood that had thoroughly defined me for the last seven long, long years.
While it still has to undergo editing, and I need to get it formatted and have a cover made and put together a marketing plan, I feel more confident now in saying that the third book in The Code series, The Blood of the Beast, is on the horizon. It has been written, and rewritten; snipped and stripped of all its annoying little points. There really only remains a handful of major changes that I need to work through.
Namely, and perhaps almost kismet given what the last seven years have entailed, I find myself stalled out by asking What about Natalia’s parents? How could they make those choices? How can they possibly be justified?
Now, as a parent – thoroughly enmeshed in the oddities of parenthood, the tears and laughter, the untameable loudness that fills our home – I think I am ready to answer those questions.
Here’s hoping, at least.
The Code Series 