In sickness and in health

I think this part must have been included in the marriage rites because when someone is sick, even just with a head cold or chest infection, they are so annoying as to inspire total abandonment or at the very least be relegated to their own chamber of coughs, snot, and complaining.  When my children are sick, which they have been much this first winter season back from the Caribbean, I nurse them, hold them close, take their temperatures first with my lips to their damp foreheads and then with the ear thermometer that tickles their ears.  I snuggle with them and hold them close and wrap us up in soft blankets knowing full well that the pox will soon be mine too.  And when it is, I will still care for them and the household, get them ready for school, look at their drawings, and make beaded necklaces, clay projects, and sticker book stories.  I will make sure they are fed, tended too, and once they are settled, I will try to take care of myself.

My husband is sick and by his account no one has ever been sicker.  Ever.  He is whining and bitching, says every fifteen minutes, "I am sick.  I am really sick."  Followed by a whooping cough, elephant truck splash with water over the back, and a shudder.  This too takes place every fifteen minutes.  He spits into a napkin and says, "Look at this.  Do you see this?  I am sick."  Sick repeated over and over like "zeek, zeek" with his cute French accent.  I stifle the giggle and I do feel quite badly for the poor soul, but the truth is, we have all been sick and we have continued to reinfect each other.  We are all nursing something right now, but no one is talking about it or requesting a news brief to be run on the local news channels.

When we were in Barbados, it was evident when high tourist season had come, not only because there were fewer parking spaces at the Holetown Super Centre, but because the cold-weather people of England, Canada, and sometimes the United States, brought their germs and upper respiratory infections through the skies and infected anyone in service to them.  Suddenly a wave of sickness hit the local populace, true Bajans and ex-pats who'd come in contact with these people.  My husband worked at a hotel and soon everyone there would be coughing and hacking.  I remember thinking even then, even when I dreamt of coming back to the States, that I certainly did not miss getting sick all the time. 

Two years in the Caribbean weakened our resistance to the viruses that plague during these months and we seem to be spending this mild winter with some respiratory infect or another, passing it back and forth, to and fro with each other.  The girls refuse their house slippers, walk outside without coats or hats.  We keep the heat at a moderate temp so as not to burn up our bank accounts.  We get sick.  We get better.  And then we do it all again.

God bless my husband and all the others are out there.  Good idea about the clause though.  He is killing it with the coughing and hacking and shuddering.  I will tend to him as I do my other babies.  I will put my lips to his damp forehead to take his temperature.  I will give him Mucinex, Theraflu, Sudafed, whatever it is he requires.  I will give him new boxes of tissues, clean up the old ones, lay blankets on his shivering body while he watches action movies and mutters,"I am zeek, really, really zeek."


(c) Copyright 2012.  Repatriated Mama:Back to the Suburban Grind.