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So hey, you know all that hemming and hawing I was doing over vaccinating my kids against H1N1? I think they already got it. Not the vaccination, mind you, which isn’t yet available, but the actual flu.

Dylan’s been dealing with a runny nose and cough for a while, and that morphed into a couple of barfing episodes on Monday. He was limp, feverish, and looked pink-eyed and terrible, then after a warm bath he seemed to completely rally—he was running around, eating, and he didn’t feel hot. Whew, I thought. Glad that’s over with! And with almost no sense of comedic foreboding, I put him to bed, along with Riley, who had just started complaining of a headache.

I don’t even know how to describe the events that eventually unfolded throughout the night, except to say that literally nothing in my four+ years of parenting had prepared me for what’s involved in caring for two children who are experiencing similar bodily misfortunes at the same time. They both ran high fevers (as tested by my lips-to-the-forehead method, which reports in three levels: Hmmm, Oh Dear, and Holy Fucking Shit), they both puked, they both required multiple baths and a truly epic and horrifying ongoing laundry cycle.

We ended up putting Riley in our room on a cot and until the combination of Motrin and Tylenol finally brought his fever down, he laid there shivering and moaning in a sort of half-sleep, which was . . . well, awful. Just awful and scary. Dylan woke up over and over and got weirdly chatty around 3 AM (“Horse?”) and oh man, the night just went on and on and on. Even when they were both sleeping, I wasn’t—I laid there for hours staring up at our dark bedroom ceiling listening for the kids while my heart whammed around in my chest like a bird in a chimney.

They both seem much better today, thank god. Runny noses and some lingering fever, but greatly improved.

After we’d all been up for a while this morning, I started thinking that if they didn’t have the flu, my decision on the vaccination was no longer a difficult one. Vaccinate away! Fill them with drugs! Stab them with needles until they look like porcupines! My god, anything to reduce the chances of another night like that, or worse.

I called the pediatrician’s office to see about making an appointment for getting them tested for H1N1, and you know what? They aren’t doing any testing. Unless you’re about to be hospitalized, doctors—at least around here—pretty much aren’t testing for the swine flu. “Not even to see if we need the vaccine or not?” I asked, and the nurse said they’re recommending everyone get the vaccine even if they suspect they had the flu.

So did they or do they still have swine flu? I think maybe they did, but there’s apparently no way to know for sure. But yeah, we’ll be getting those vaccinations. Even though, ironically, they may be totally unnecessary now.

After a long day capped off by an endless witching hour complete with meltdown after meltdown and countless scoldings and lectures and at one point some flat-out begging to STOP THE WHINING FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, bedtime finally approached and I ran a bath. Peeled off shirts—blotting the 4-year-old’s tears since the shirt caught on his head for a minute oh my GOD, kid—and pants and my own clothes and lifted them into the tub with me.

During the first remodel, when we added the shop, expanded a bedroom, and relocated a bathroom, I asked for a corner soaking tub. It was to be my version of the man cave (the double garage JB built not to house cars but to hold every piece of penis gear he owns and keep it nicely coated with sawdust) and of all the many dollars and ass-pains we have invested in our little house, the tub has earned its keep and then some. I get in it every single night before bed, no exceptions, and when it’s time to bathe the kids that’s where they go too.

I sit in the tub and they sit in front of me, and the sight of them is almost too much. Dylan’s losing that babychub vealfat look, his bones are emerging and he has actual shoulders. They squiggle and splash in the water and their necks look like delicate flower stems and the backs of their fuzzy close-cropped heads are like doppler maps of hurricanes: Riley’s hair swirls uniformly clockwise, Dylan’s turns in two different directions. The nubbly bumps of their spines, the curve of their cheeks when they turn their heads to avoid my incoming washcloth, the bubbles clinging to them. Their skin so pure, like something holy.

Riley dramatically announcing he’s going to dive under the ocean, Dylan splashing in big hand-sweeps and peering at himself in the faucet’s reflection. My boys, so beautiful.

I don’t suppose we’ll be sharing baths much longer. And oh. I will miss it so much.

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