sick day

My, oh my, do you have any idea at what an abysmally slow pace a day can creep by when you have a fever, and can hardly move your creaking joints, and certainly can't sleep? Well, I suppose there's a pretty good chance that you do - more people than just me get fevers, after all. Still, if the news breaks tomorrow morning that, by some freakish turn of events, this day took a whole week to get itself over with, I won't be terribly surprised.

I've been the fifth of us to fall prey to this bug within the last couple of weeks, and the level of tip-toeing and sympathy (at least among our younger members) seems to have dropped significantly since our first victim fell. That isn't to say that Sam doesn't lovingly doctor me up with his "preciouses" (chewable vitamin C's), or that Eli isn't willing enough to run and get whatever forms of nourishment and hydration I require. They're a fine little set of caregivers, if a little on the short side.

But they're still little boys, and my day of lolling helplessly around the living room came well-equipped with more than its fair share of light-saber thwacking, hollering, arguing about who had pulled the tallest stack of DVD's out of the closet, as well as climbing all over me and asking the same questions multiple times.

Now. I love my brothers. However. With all the aching and head-aching and fevering and despondent clock-watching I was busy doing, by the end of the afternoon I didn't feel like I had such a very great quantity of time or patience left over for these things. So when my family went out to eat for supper, I kind of thought ... ahhhh, yes. the house to myself. You know.

So while they were gone I finished watching Spiderman 3 (which I'd started earlier), ate some toast and canned peaches (why not live it up?), and re-read the first two chapters of The Hobbit. When I was smaller (ten? twelve?), I recorded myself reading The Hobbit aloud on cassette tapes, and gave it to my dad for Christmas. At the time, it was rather embarrassing to listen to (is my voice really that squeaky??), but tonight as I read through those familiar passages, and heard my own younger voice lisping along in the back of my mind, the memory was a sweet one. (But maybe anything can seem sweet, from far enough away.)

Curled up in Dad's chair, wrapped in a blanket, eating toast, and reading The Hobbit, I almost felt like a child again. But a child alone, home by herself with only a rabbit and an obnoxious dog to keep her company. And when I looked up and saw that it was 10:00, it wasn't fun anymore. I'd had my time alone, and now my family needed to come home. Morbid visions of why they hadn't returned yet flashed through my mind. It was a precious cargo that Santa Fe was carrying back to me, all of them together, all of my family together...

I shook myself by the mental scruff, and quieted my heart to pray briefly for their safety, instead of freaking out about their very reasonable absence of two hours. Finished my chapter, turned off the light, dozed for a bit. Not long afterward, as I wandered the house in search of another blanket, I saw lights in the driveway, and my heart was happy again. The loud voices, the lights, the thump-thump-thumping little footsteps everywhere, the silly questions ... yes, this is how it should be.

In conclusion, I think the point of this post is either:
A) I like to have my family around me;
B) Being alone isn't all it's cracked up to be (especially at night);
C) I'm still feverish;
or probably D) All of the above.