The kids are sick again. . .

October 25, 2010


Emily stayed home today. 

Sick.

Fever, chills, sneezing, silliness. . . .

All the signs of not being well.

I had no classes today, so I stayed home and worked at the kitchen table.

Marking assignments for my 2103 class.

Em drifting in and out of the kitchen during her periods of wakefulness, or hunger.

Cause sick though she may be, she is still able to discern hunger.





Sick days when the kids were younger meant a day off. . .for me and them.

I mean, I couldn't leave them home alone, now, could I???

Someone had to be there to pump them full of liquids and medicines, feed them chicken soup broth, chauffer them to the doctor's office, wipe their sweaty foreheads, and try really hard to get them to the bathroom on time.

As soon as the first signs of sickness appeared, there would be the inevitable shuffling of the day's schedule. 

Making arrangements to have classes cancelled, meeting rescheduled. . .

I won't lie, if it hadn't been for the periods of sickness among my children, I may have never gotten a day off.




Of all the kids, Keith was the one who was home sick the most.

From birth, if there was something going around Keith would be the one to get it.

Bronchitis, influenza, head colds, chest colds, even tracheitis, which I had never heard of until Keith got it.

He missed more school than the girls combined.

Or at least until Mer went to high school.

No one has been able to beat her record of most school days missed for no reason other than stubborness and an absolute desire to do whatever it took to piss me off.

There were some days when I would literally just walk into my office, the phone would be ringing, and upon answering it, I would say,

"What could she have possibly done!  I JUST dropped her off!!!"

Because it was ALWAYS someone from the school.

Always.

I KNOW the vice prinicipals had me on speed dial.




Keithie and I spent many days together, cuddled on the couch while I wiped his sweaty brow, fed him sips of ginger ale and he watched television.

Or movies.

You don't know how many times I watched the original Batman, the one with Micheal Keaton and Kim Bassinger.  It was Keith's favourite film for a very long time, to the point where I would routinely wake up at  5.00 am to find Keithie in the living room, on the floor in front of the television, wearing his flannel cowboy pjs, feet tucked underneath him, eating a bowl of cereal, so deeply engrossed in the film that he didn't even know I was in the room.

He did this for weeks.

And when he was tired with Batman he would simply change films, watching the three original Star Wars films.

One morning, having been awakend by Han Solo and Luke Skywalker for the umpteenth time, I asked him how come he would get up so early to watch these movies.

The answer was so obvious, I don't know why I didn't realize it myself.

Little Pookie: "It's the only time the girls are quiet.'

Touche Pookie, touche.

The first time I watched The Full Monty was with Keith, while he dozed on and off, taking periodic breaks to throw up in the bucket on the floor beside him.

I'd hold his little head, wipe his face off, and then he would drift off to sleep.

Until I moved.

As soon as I thought I may be able to sneak off to the bathroom and get some much needed relief, he would wake up, and ask me if I was leaving him.

I really, really miss those days.




The worst sickness related experience we ever had was the result of Meredyth.

Surprise, surprise.

In kingergarten, Mer was off everyday to learn all the skills she would use later on.

Detention, talking back to the teachers, refusing to participate in anything she didn't want to do, providing sex education lessons to the other little children in her class.

She's been honing her skills for years.




I always taught the kids to share, and it would seem that Mer took this literally.

Because she brought home the chicken pox.

And within a couple of day, all three kids were sporting spots.

Oddly enough, the severity of their chicken pox was directly correlated to their individual personalities.

Mer's were the least severe and didn't stay around very long.

Why?

Because she just didn't have the time to let something as insignificant as chicken pox get in the way of her socializing.

As soon as she was able, she went off to Nana's for a few days of respite from her infected brother and sister.

I know why she wanted to leave so quickly: she would be the sole recipient of Nana and Papa's loving care and attention.

No other siblings with whom to share the spotlight, Mer would soak up all the TLC she didn't get at home (um hum).

Just as she wanted it.

Mer has always maintained that she was meant to be an only child. 

Sharing has never been one of her strongest attributes. 

And she was more than capable of informing me of her displeasure at providing her with siblings. 

When I told her I was pregnant with Em, she just looked at me and said, "Again???!!"


Pookie's chicken pox were a bit more severe than Mer's, because unlike Mer, he just wasn't of the mind that he could fight them off. 

If they wanted to infect him, he wasn't going to stand in the way.

Mellow, yeilding, never creating ripples. . . that was Keith. 

He stayed home with me while Mer finished convelescing at Nana's, the receipient of several oatmeal baths, calomine rubs, glasses of ginger ale. . .

During one warm, oatmeal  bath, me bent over the tub scrubbing his spots, he looked at me and said,

Spot Pookie: "Mummy, if you thrown in some raisins and cinnamon, we could have breakfast in the bathtub!"

Always the smartest little Pookie. 



Now Emily was nine months old when she was the beneficiary of Mer's chicken pox.

And because she was the least able to voice her opinions about her malady, nor was she able to actively and vociferously prevent the chicken pox from invading her little body.

She has chicken pox everywhere, all over, ten times the number her brother and sister had to deal with.

Including one that actually took up residence on her eye lid, with her little eyelashes stuck in the middle.

Of all the kids, she was the sickest.

The most miserable.

The least able to put into words how she was feeling.

But that was okay, because that child could always manage to make you understand just how miserable she was feeling.

By the time the chicken pox had finished their invasion of the Van Every children, two weeks had passed.

I was in the fourth year of my undergraduate degree, working on my honours thesis in sociology.

I had managed to get to classes sporadically, depending upon which already-had-chicken-pox-friend I could bribe to come to the house and stay with the kids, but even with my powers of persuasion, I still missed a lot of class time.

Just writing about it makes me want crawl in bed for a nap.



Now when I got sick, because I always did, there was no one to look after me.

One evening over dinner, I mentioned to the kids that I wasn't feeling well,  and I thought I was getting sick, and Mer looked at me, shocked and said,
"Your Mum.  You're not allowed to get sick!"

She was certainly right about that.

Now, if I get sick, Stephen takes such good care of me. . .he brings be soup and dry toast, keeps the dogs from harrassing me, doesn't force me to answer phone calls, he just lets me rest.

That alone is worth getting married for.

Now when Stephen is sick, he just wants to be left alone.

No food. No talk. No nothing.

Just alone.

If he wants coffe and conversation, he'll come downstairs and get it.

The only one allowed to be near him is Goblet.

She's all the comfort he wants.

He isn't even interested in his continuing relationship with Ellie.




Certainly, there were other times when the kids were all sick at the same time.

But the chicken pox were the most memorable.

After a while, I knew that if one of them brought home something, it was going to spread to the other two.

As they became older, it was a little easier to juggle work and home during times of illness.

I'd stay home during the early days, the worst days, but when they were on-the-mend-but-not-good-for-public-consumption, I was able to leave them for a couple of hours, so long as they had a big bottle of ginger ale, the remote and the portable phone.

Because they knew I'd call every 15 minutes.

Now they act like I'm abandoning them, leaving them to suffer alone, but not in silence, condemning me for being uncaring and unloving, the Cruella De Vil of mother's, the kind of mother who would leave them naked and starving in a snowstorm, who would give them baby aspirin for dengue fever.

The drama would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. 



Title Lyric:  The Kids are Sick Again by Maximo Park