TAKING BULLETSThe past two weeks the company was riddled with illness. First young Charlie brought something home and ran a fever for two days. We kept her home for three.
Missus does something peculiar at times like these. Instead of avoiding the sick child, she approaches.
It’s not lost on me that one hundred years ago the greatest killer of children was infectious disease.
My own grandfather recalled two doting big sisters. He heard them call to each other plaintively in the night while sick with Scarlett Fever brought to the home by a milkman. In the morning, he awoke to silence and found them both dead.
The second biggest killer of children before the modern era was infanticide. We won’t discuss that today. Suffice it to say cleanliness, vaccinations and modern medicines have changed things.
So it was that missus found herself snuggling with her sick little girl, the two of them under a tartan blanket, missus acting as a sentry lest her little girl be taken by high temperature. Not on her watch.
Of course, our Charlie Charlootz, as I sometimes call her, recovered quickly. It was almost as if Missus had taken the virus from the child by absorption, telling the ailment to come and pick on someone its own size. And this is what the virus did, you see.
Howie, her Little Bear, is never far from his mother and is perhaps more conscientious than his considerably conscientious sister. It’s the two aspects of conscientiousness where they differ.
Whereas the conscientiousness aspects of industriousness and orderliness are well represented in them both, we suspect Howie’s boy behaviour has resulted in the development of a significant disgust sensitivity in his sister.
One time I offered him two cookies, one for him and one for his sister. He refused them and answered, “I’m not allowed to touch that one, Dad.” I put it on a plate where he could keep things sterile as ordered. Conscientious indeed.
Soon mother and son were sick, both coughing until it seemed the walls where shaking. Howie has an airway about as thick as a pencil, so a cough is serious stuff for the boy. He was home for almost a week. Missus’ instincts nursed him until well, but she herself became sicker.
I took over supper and both kids would eat with me quickly and then go and sit around their mother, playing with toys and crafting things where they could keep an eye on her. I phoned around and sourced some mildly narcotic medicine to ease her discomfort. Lesions in the throat, the doc says.
And so, the boy was finally well enough to return to school like his sister yet, despite missus still being ill. This struck them as unfair, having been taken care of only to abandon her for something as optional as school.
Neither of them was happy about leaving her in my care. Imagine that…
As Howie pulled on his boots yesterday morning to go meet the bus at the end of the driveway, he told his mother how he felt about her. “Mom, don’t die while I’m gone. If you die, I will kill myself,” he says to her, matter-of-factly.
“Oh Howie, I should be alright. I would not want you to do that. Now, you go have fun at school,” she answers.
“I am serious mom; I’d die for you.”
“I’d die for you too Howie,” came her reply.
“I’d take a bullet for you,” he says.
“I’d take a bullet for you too,” said missus.
“No mom, if a bullet was going to hit you, I’d jump in front and take it for you.”
He’s nine years old, and with that settled, missus saw the children off and returned to her couch.
This is the day…
cw