Into the Valley of Death (and sniffles)
It’s a genuinely horrible moment waking up with a horrible cold, staggering out to the lounge room and realising that your husband is doing the same thing, because he’s come down with the same thing. This means the battle of Who is the Sickest and Who Will Look After the Kids is about to commence. It’s a war no one ever really wins.
Fortunately our kids our now at the age where they’re happy enough to watch a movie on the couch while we lay at either of the end, drifting in and out of sleep and only waking long enough to say “Do you still have a cold? Because I still have a cold” or, just “For God’s sake, when will this thing just go?”
Three weeks of us staggering around the house like pensioners. And not the active, fun-loving kind of pensioner you see on the news. The ones in the human interest bits who’ve taken up hang-gliding at the age of ninety-four. No. The other kind who sat in a chair the day they turned sixty, announce they’re done with living now, thank you very much, and spend the next thirty years watching daytime television and reading the obituaries in case there’s someone they know featured in there.
The most galling thing of all is that we caught it off our oldest kid who was sick for no more than half a day. This is the most outrageous part about having kids. “Oh,” they’ll say, “I think I’m getting a cold, my throat hurts a bit”, then they’ll cough right in your face because where else would they cough? The next day, they’re completely fine, but you now have the Black Death and are wondering if it’s too late to update your last will and testament.
We’re better now. I didn’t need to have a nap today and my husband went back to work. Sometimes in the evenings we reminisce about that first week of being sick, as if we’re veterans of a terrible war. “Remember lying on the couch?” “Oh, yes. I remember the couch. Did you have body aches and pains and a throat like razorblades?” “I had the body aches but not the throat, did you have the crushing fatigue?” “Yes, I thought I was going to die from exhaustion just getting out of bed.”
Parenting books never mention this part. Probably because it’s not considered polite to tell terrify new parents. But someone should at least drop a hint that they’re about to the victims in a biological warfare and there’s nothing they can do about it. Except buy more hand sanitiser and fruitlessly say over and over, “Did you wash your hands? I don’t think you washed your hands. Well… because I saw you with your finger up your nose almost to the elbow. Yes, I did. So, can you go wash your hands?”
We really are better now. But please can no one cough in our faces again? We spent too long in virus town, we’re not ready to go back.
