30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 2

"I called your mother.  She'll be here in 15 minutes."

I must have been six; I was in Kindergarten, the land of required naps, and it was nearing Easter.  I had thrown up at school, which would later become my litmus test for whether or not to miss work.  (No vomiting?  No fever?  Get over yourself.) She arrived in a yellow Checker taxi cab; my father had our single car at work.  It was early spring and drizzly though I remember a light coating of snow.  We arrived home at our house in either Texas or Illinois...and ate soup and grilled cheese in a kitchen that is one of the two rooms I remember from that house.  I watched the afternoon sunlight pour into my bedroom, where I lay unsleeping.  My most vivid memory is the realization that I would miss that day's art project, the decoupaging of tissue paper onto an egg shaped piece of construction paper for Easter.  I was heart broken and realized I would have done anything to be back in school.  My mother reassured me that we could do the project at home. But we never did.  I returned to school the next day.

Despite my disappointment about the art project I never completed, my memories of that first sick day are of warmth and security.  I still spend so much time trying to be all the things that everyone expects of me that it is impossible for me to choose self-care.  It is a struggle I have always faced, whether it dates back to early ADHD or anxiety or simply personality.  Yet, there is a complete calm that falls over me when I am finally forced to succumb to the illness and allow myself to be cared for.  On that day, curled up in bed in the middle of the day, watching the dust motes float in the sunlight, I knew that my mother would come to me; she would be there for me to ensure that I had everything I needed, even if she had to take a cab to get to me.

Ironically, Jamie's parents took care of Duncan last week while we were away at a conference.  Just hours after we had left the house, they were called to pick up Duncan from school because he complained of a stomach ache.  He didn't seem particularly sick when they brought him home, but they sent him to bed to rest after a lunch of soup and grilled cheese.  He was sad to have missed building a candy trebuchet in his engineering class that afternoon, and I reassured him that we can make one at home.  Jamie and I agreed with his parents that the far more important issue was Duncan testing whether or not the system would work.  He needed to know that the "Grandma and Grandpa unit" would pull through in case of an emergency, and as he proudly told us afterward, it did.  The school reached the right people through the right channels; Grandpa navigated the sick pickup process all the way to the nurse's office, and Duncan had the security he needed to get through the rest of the week without us.  

When I truly need it, I will crawl under the heavy blankets, in the middle of the day, and watch the dust motes dance in streams of sunlight, like fairies, and remind myself that if I let go, my loved one's will catch me.  Whatever I am forced to give up (these days it looks more like independence decoupaged onto control and self-reliance) is worth knowing how it feels to be completely cared for; they will come for me.