Rip van Winkle

Time stops for no man, but my stomach seems to do it all the time.

 

I woke up this morning sometime between 5 and 6 am with the feeling I had swallowed a rock.  A large, angular one.  Sure enough, my dinner hadn't moved a bit, parked somewhere between my esophagus and my duodenum.  Unfortunately, it proved to be the onset of the plague flu.  The morning and early afternoon were spent in a delirious slumber into which I could not completely descend, and from which I could not completely extract myself.

 

I felt a bit like Rip van Winkle, lost somewhere in the Catskills, stultified by the strange liquors of Henry Hudson's long-departed ghost crew.  Thankfully, I  awoke before 20 years had passed, but my legs, arms, back, feet, head, hands... they all ache.  The flu is no fun.

 

Sickness poses an interesting challenge in families with young children.  First of all, the sick-ee becomes a walking petri dish, showering his loved ones with a fine mist of viruses and/or bacteria.  More often the not, the rest of the family succumbs in due time.

 

But this is true of sickness among any group of people.  The unique challenge that comes with a sick adult in a family with small children is that suddenly all the responsibilities of parenting fall upon the other.  This is just one more reason that I felt like old Mr. van Winkle, who, if we remember, was a bit of a lay-about and a wastrel, with an aversion to 'profitable labour'.  Jessica has heroically managed all affairs in our household, while I ponder my intestines.

 

Thankfully, the sun seems to be rising on my long night of sickness, and the weekend should not suffer too much.