Days Gone By

The past few days my middle daughter, Lanie, has been sick.  She spiked a fever of over 103 and spent the better part of the week on the couch covered in blankets up to her eyeballs.  She was pasty with gray crescents under her eyes, and her curly hair was beginning to dreadlock from not being able to lift her head off the couch.

I know that a sick child in February is hardly noteworthy. But if you happen to have an especially boisterous child, who will literally climb the walls, and who spends the better part of the day making jokes and answering you with “poopy” or “doody” or “don’t know and don’t care.”  Then this change in behavior is totally offputting.  But, horrible as it may sound, (and ONLY because she wasn’t vomiting or spewing any other liquid from any bodily orifice) I actually didn’t mind having her home sick like this for a few days.  

It gave us a chance to cuddle and watch way too much tv.  She just sat, quietly, and let me mother her in the most basic way.  It reminded me of her infancy (minus the moaning and the crazy hair) when she was completely content to just snuggle with her mommy.  Of course, this was also the child who walked at nine and half months which pretty much ended her infancy phase and turned into the climbing walls phase, so I may feel a little gypped.

Anyhow, Lanie is almost back to her normal self, who I completely adore.  And who I am convinced has been given to me to test all that I thought I knew about parenting and all the baggage I hold about being a middle child myself.

Summer in a Day

Although I’m fairly certain it is a sign of global warming, experiencing a day of seventy degree weather in the middle of February is quite a treat.  I wouldn’t exactly say that I loathe winter, but it is my least favorite season here in Pennsylvania.  I am basically cold from about mid-October until April. This was our backyard on January 26, 2011.  The snow was deep and heavy, and the air frigid.  For weeks this was our view.

This year seems particularly grueling on the cold front.  Two full days off from school in one week, countless two hour delays and hundreds of dollars spent on having the driveway plowed.  And then there are these poor creatures, whose magnificent grace completely distracts me from the fact that they have eaten every flowering plant, bush and tree in my yard.

So for the past two days around here, it felt like Ray Bradbury’s short story, “All Summer in a Day.”  An hour of sunshine amidst seven years of rain.  All of the kids, especially the little one, enjoyed playing outside without cumbersome winter accessories. A brief precursor to the beautiful fall and spring that make us tolerate these winters.  And for a few moments, I felt genuinely warm in February.