I am home playing Mr. Mom this morning. Laurel, Sarah's middle child, is sick and is in recovery mode ... happily watching the Disney Channel while running a low grade fever.
"Sit beside me Mike," she asks with tired eyes and puffy cheeks.
"Hell no," I reply. "I got stuff to do."
So I'm trying to work in the kitchen while she laughs at whatever Disney is passing for televised entertainment. I have earphones in to block out the noise listening to Rhapsody while I write. As a survivor of raising three kids already (I'm talking about you Kristen!), I know how to handle children's sick days.
Of course when Kristen was sick I'd fill her up with Tylenol just before I dropped her off at school. That bought me several hours of work.
I'm more mellow now. In a hundred years I wonder about how much the work will matter anyway?
So ... I've given her a Popsicle, taken her temperature five times because she keeps asking if she's better now, watched her walk outside to get Winston, the little gay dog, and told her "Hell no" a dozen times over something or another.
It makes me reminisce.
Chelsea learned art with homeless people because I often took her to work when she was sick. We were big into art as an expression of inward struggles. My youngest watched all of this and has a degree from the University of Georgia in art now. Last night I was reading her proposal for acceptance into New York University. It makes me wonder about the glory of sick days.
Kristen was a master at faking sick to get days off. By eleven each morning Jesus himself would have touched her and she was miraculously healed and ready to play her friends.
Jeremy was pretty cool about it all. He just played basketball.
Yesterday Laurel was frustrated because she wanted to talk to me alone. There just wasn't the opportunity. She could have faked all of this just to talk. Kristen often did stuff like this.
Anyway, it won't matter in a hundred years.
It only matters now.
