It takes a very particular sort of person to care for sick children—someone with the patience of a saint, the reflexes of an emergency-room nurse, and the stomach of a Victorian chimney sweep.
There is the coughing, naturally. There is the whining, which starts as a small, plaintive sound from the upstairs hallway and gradually becomes the background music of your life. And then there is vomit, appearing at the precise moment you have misplaced the one remaining washable blanket and are wearing the only shirt you own that you genuinely like.
No one tells you, when you have multiple children, that illness does not arrive as a family event. It is not a group activity, like bowling or a pleasant trip to the apple orchard. No, each child gets sick independently, on a carefully staggered schedule designed to maximize inconvenience and consume every vacation day you have earned since the Clinton administration.
Child One gets sick on Monday. Child Two, having spent 48 hours licking the same remote control and breathing directly into everyone’s face, begins coughing on Wednesday. By Friday, you are standing in the kitchen holding a thermometer, a bottle of children’s medicine, and what may be a sock, wondering whether you can use a sick day retroactively for your emotional well-being.
And, if you are the mother, there is an additional detail nobody puts in the parenting brochure: sick children generally do not want Dad.
Dad is fine. Dad is nice. Dad may even possess admirable qualities, such as the ability to open jars or find the missing extension cord. But when a child has a fever, a cough, or the vague conviction that their entire life has become unbearable because their nose feels “weird,” they want Mom.
Last night, while I was tending to two sick children—one coughing dramatically and the other requiring the sort of logistical support normally reserved for a small military operation—my husband went fishing.
For three hours.
Fishing is, I suppose, his version of running. Not running as in athletic movement, obviously. More in the sense of fleeing into the wilderness, where no one is asking for ginger ale, a different blanket, or an explanation of why the television is “too loud” when it is not actually on.
Meanwhile, I was running my own race: the Sick-Kid Marathon. There are no medals. No water stations. No encouraging strangers clapping from the sidewalk. Just a never-ending loop between bedrooms, the bathroom, the medicine cabinet, and the laundry room, with occasional obstacles involving tissues, suspicious noises, and somebody yelling, “Mooooom!”
The real danger, however, is still ahead.
Eventually, my husband will get sick.
At that point, I expect he will require a carefully managed recovery environment: low lighting, specific snacks, several blankets, continuous hydration, and perhaps a handwritten note from the governor acknowledging his bravery. He will cough once and look at me as if he has survived the Oregon Trail.
And I will have to be strong.
Because I have already had a stroke, for God’s sake. I do not have the cardiovascular capacity to endure a household respiratory virus and a grown man’s dramatic interpretation of it.
So, for now, I run. I run from germs. I run from laundry. I run from the sound of someone clearing their throat upstairs. And most of all, I run from the inevitable moment when the fishing trip ends, the illness reaches its final victim, and someone asks me where the thermometer is.
