A Lesson to Share

 I was sick this past weekend! It was so weird! Where did it come from? (Costco, I think, actually, come to think of it.)

Pre-pandemic, Sully and I used to catch colds every month or so. It was fairly predictable and, in retrospect, maybe a sign that our immune systems suck? But this past year we've been cold-free and loving it. I know a lot of people are like, "Burn the masks! Bring back the handshake! Let's lick stuff!" But honestly, I'll be pleased as punch if I don't have to touch strangers anymore, if I could minimize the number of times a person literally hands me a virus that's going to knock me out for four days. What even are handshakes? And why? Let's normalize warm, effusive, full-upper-body nods and believing people when they say it's nice to meet us without having to shake parts of each other's bodies to affirm it.  

Anyway.

My first instinct, upon realizing that the tickle in my throat was real and not, once again, my overactive imaginary-symptom-amplifying imagination, was to get a covid test. It was negative, which made sense. I'm first-dosed, I'm conservative with my in-person visits, and the community numbers are super low. It's a regular old common cold which, like I said, I probably picked up at Costco. I'd forgotten how rotten common colds are though; I've forgotten how to tough them out. I've forgotten how your head gets so close to feeling like it's going to break open and how claustrophobic I get when I can't breathe out of my nose. Like I almost wish my head would break open so I wouldn't feel so confined inside of it.

I also feel like this past year has turned the cold into a creepier thing than it ever was before. It's like I always thought of the cold as a cheesy 90s movie villain—bumbling, disgruntled but not evil, easily foiled after a couple of hours of setting up the appropriate traps (liquids, naps, vitamin whatever)—but now it's gotten more sinister in my mind. You just hear story after story of, "I had a cold, and it felt like a normal cold, and then it was COVID AND I COULDN'T BREATHE AND I SPENT THREE MONTHS IN ICU ON A VENTILATOR" and I guess, after a year and a half of that, we're all primed to think that a tickle in a throat is a big huge hairy deal.

Anyway. 

Scarlett, who is four and hadn't seen me sick in, like, a year and a half, literally didn't remember what "being sick" even meant or what it looked like. She kept eyeing me, bewildered and skeptical, asking me to explain myself. Demanding it. "Why do your eyes look like that?! Why do you sound like that?! Did you swallow a jalapeño without chewing it?! Can you stop doing that [coughing]?!"

Sully was a bit more sympathetic, but he is still seven years old and his sympathy isn't as helpful as, say, Barclay's sympathy. I woke up on Friday morning to the sound of clattering and shuffling in the kitchen, and I slowly became aware of two little voices discussing butter—specifically, how to soften it. 

"We could put it in this bowl and pour boiling water onto it?"

"We could blow it with a hair dryer?"

"We could put it in the oven?"

Sully had, apparently, decided to make me breakfast in bed. He had enlisted Scarlett to help him, and they had a stack of magazines, all flipped open to the recipe pages. They had narrowed it down to Very Berry Smoothies and Candy Cane Christmas Cookies and then, because they are 7 and 4 and nothing if not ex-treeeeme-ly practical, decided on the cookies. Heartwarming, TO BE SURE. But that is how I ended up baking myself cookies at 7 AM on a morning where I was so sick I could barely see straight and eating them even though all I wanted was warm honey water. 

I just kept thinking to myself, "This is very cute, and it's a story I'll tell Sully when he's older and we'll laugh about it together and it'll be good for our relationship and stuff."

Anyway. 

The next morning, I sprained my neck (just existing, nothing fancy; I am a very tense person and if I get stressed out I sprain my neck, it's fun). If I thought I couldn't move before that, I really couldn't move after. So I spent the rest of the weekend on the couch, in the bed, and on the patio furniture. Finished two books and started two books (I am, suddenly, a person who has about five books on the go at a time). Did a lot of Sudokus. Did a lot of just laying there staring up at the trees. Watched a thunderstorm roll in and out. And now I feel better—but not just physically. I feel rested mentally in a way I haven't in a very, very long time.

So maybe that's the upside of getting sick—the laying down and chilling out. There's probably a lesson to be had about laying down and chilling out even if you're not being forced to by your crappy immune system so, here, I pass this lesson along to you. Go outside. Lay down. Chill out. Stare at the sky as though you physically cannot move. 

Go! Now! 

And then bake yourself some cookies. Sully's got a good recipe he can share with you.