I have a secret..........

The bug is traveling through my house like a freight train. If I go according to the timing of it hitting Bill and then hitting Ella, by all rights I should be strapped across the tracks tomorrow, around mid-morning, with a raging headache, body aches, possible barfing and high fevers.

Ella came home early from school on Wednesday with all of the above. When I came home from work later in the day, she was nested in our big bed with the tv and dvd player in the corner, a buffet of cough syrups, tinctures, kid's Motrin and Vitamin Waters on the bedside stand.... and dad, cuddled beside her, just barely having gotten his strength back from his bout with the bug.

While I would never wish ill upon my child, I secretly enjoy when she's bedridden with the bug. Not only because it slows her down and quiets the volume level in the house, but because in that quiet there is a nurturing and stillness that rarely happens otherwise. Ella isn't the kind of kid to sit on the couch and read a book. She's not the kind of kid to come randomly and curl herself into your lap. She's far too active, far too physical and busy for that kind of immobility. She climbs trees, swings from grapevines, climbs the haybales in the barn, builds forts in every corner of the house with every blanket we own, and is just generally, as I've called her before here on this blog, our jungle house pygmy.

When Bill gets sick, I tend to his needs, make him soup, draw his bath, make him toast and I'm kind. But I don't crawl into bed with him. I sleep in another room and refuse kisses and cuddles. I'll run my fingers through his hair when his head hurts but then I immediately wash them when I'm done.

With Ella it's different. We lay on that big bed for long periods of time just staring into eachother's eyes because, for her, there's really nothing else to do. She coughs in my face and I burrow my nose into her sweaty fevered hair. I savor it.

I don't necessarily enjoy catching her puke in the palms of my hands at three oclock in the morning, or changing the sheets because the puke just dripped through my fingers anyway.... I could pass on that end of it. And it is always so painful to not be able to take away their aches and pains but there's something magical in keeping her comfortable, to spraying the room with peppermint and eucalyptus to freshen it up, to keeping a cold compress on her fevered forehead. I remember when she was much smaller, her remedy to any ailment was a cold washcloth. If I stubbed my toe, turned my ankle or suffered heartache....all of it could be remedied with a cold washcloth. She'll be ten this summer and sometimes I pine for that simplicity. It will never be that easy again.

Yesterday the temperatures almost reached seventy and we opened the windows beside the bed and listened to all of the new birds who have arrived on the farm. We noticed the first purple bunch of tiny crocuses and I went outside with the clippers and cut some for her bedside table while she watched longingly from the screened window. Mid-day, when the fever was low and her energy level relatively good, she sat at that window and sang her little heart out.

Today we made it outside, gathered branches that had broken with winter storms, mended one of the fences that the cows kept breaking through and played connect four in the sunshine. We walked back to her "secret garden" and hung out by the stream and laid on our backs with the sun in our faces. Woody, our Border Collie and Trixie, the best kittie in the entire universe, accompanied us on our travels like mascots. She was moving slow and pacing herself, eating light and staying low-key.

Tomorrow she'll rise with a vengence, like Hades when he comes to claim Persephone in autumn. She'll rise with pounding feet, operatic singing and maniacal laughter. I know it. But hopefully, if the freight train flu comes to claim me, hopefully hopefully, she'll comfort me with a cold washcloth. Just this one last time maybe.