Oct
12
Let me start out by saying that I know I’m jinxing myself with this blog entry.
By publicly saying what I’m about to say, I am almost certainly bringing unholy doom unto our little family, possibly in the form of simultaneous stomach flus that send virulent substances shooting from everyone’s mouth and ass at precisely 3:12 AM.
And yet: I feel I must share this, because it’s been such an amazing and shocking turn of events.
Okay.
Here goes.
No one has been sick in over a month.
Since their last day at daycare, both kids have been perfectly healthy. No puking. No fevers.
Riley’s mysterious, worrisome headaches and tummy aches have completely disappeared.
Their near-constant runny noses? Gone.
The bottles of children’s Tylenol and ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet? Full. Seals unbroken.
Like I said, I know—I KNOW—it’s stupid to say this out loud. It’s just . . . I can’t help it. I can’t believe the difference. I always joked daycare was a petri dish, but I never suspected how true that really was.
It’s funny, in a way. For so long I had to put my kids in daycare to work. Daycare often made my kids sick. Staying home with sick kids put my job in jeopardy. Ha ha ha ARGH.
And now, I guess I’ll knock some wood. Toss some salt over my shoulder. Cross my fingers. Maybe get out the barf bucket, just in case.
Oct
11
The noise and chaos stops suddenly, replaced by murmured words of love and the quiet clicks of two doors shutting. It isn’t perfectly silent—someone is humming, someone is kicking their feet against the wall—but the rooms are echoey and I can hear far-off airplanes and it is different.
I type, furiously. I sit on the couch and move with the sunlight from one cushion to the next, shielding my screen from the glare.
When I’m done, if I get done, I move spacily around the house, picking things up, setting them down. I peer at myself in the mirror, pluck an errant eyebrow hair.
I think about little things that are going well: I’m on the fifth day of stopping a bad habit, the boys and I had a good school morning, I cleaned the floors yesterday and today they shine.
I think about how I still feel like I’m wearing this new life like a coat, how when someone recently asked me if I work I said “no” before correcting myself, and what the fuck is up with that?
I think, helplessly, about a day last week when Dylan was pitching an enormous howling tantrum in the car and I reached back and grabbed his leg while raising my voice at him and Riley said to me, “If you want him not to cry, you need to not hurt him, Mom,” and how despite the fact that it wasn’t exactly a fair thing to say I will still probably hear that sentence for the rest of my goddamned life.
The house is strange and poised, ready to spring back into its normal state of swirling distractions. Everything seems to hang, like a movie-effect of a life put on pause.
And then: over.
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