The Sick Time

or How We Spent Our Thanksgiving Vacation

the fence bordering my dentist’s office parking lot

In the sick time
the sleep time
time drifts like a summer river

time passes swiftly 
in the world around you
while you are not in the world

the waves of time carry you
through the hours and days 
the nights, the days

events happen in the world
but you are in the dreamtime
the sick time
not yet ready to be in the world

listen to your sick body
sleep, rest
your only job is to be sick
wait for mending

there is nothing to be done
except care for the body
which, being sick, needs 
special care

if you are the mother you must still
care for children
especially if they are sick too
all of you sick in the sicktime
the dreamtime

household tasks
winnow to the most necessary
food, drink, medicine

once on the mend
you shuffle through the house
gather dishes, tissues, and laundry
tidy the worst of the mess
ignore what you have no strength for

The music of the house is coughs
and moans and sometimes quiet sobs
and great blowings of noses

the kettle boils and all the groceries
languish while everyone sips soups
and teas, drinks unaccustomed juice
hydration is the word of the day

you lose the new bottle of ibuprofen
when a sick person shoves it 
into the snack drawer 

the Thanksgiving leftovers
go uneaten
the pies in a forlorn pile
in the fridge
and the gallons of milk undrunk

Advent arrived unheeded
while you slept the day through
hardly aware of the dawning light

the candles lie on the table
no one could find the ring to stand them in
no one had energy for greenery

But somewhere someone is singing
Creator of the Stars of Night
and O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

---

I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving. We did¹. Except for my younger son who was too sick to do more than pick at his food and who then played computer games by himself while we went to visit family after dinner. (He’s a teenaged boy; he didn’t miss us.)

The day after Thanksgiving my other son succumbed— he’d only really recovered from his last round of sickness for two days, so this seemed massively unfair.

By Friday evening I skipped the plate of Thanksgiving leftovers I’d been looking forward to and instead drank two bowls of turkey broth and took myself to bed early. I basically slept until Sunday evening, waking up only to cough, vomit, turn over, resettle my pillows. Fortunately my husband only got mildly sick and held down the fort, changing sick bowls, renting a carpet wet vac for the kid who missed and vomited on the living room rug, buying juice and ibuprofen and the makings for miso soup.

We are still in recovery. Still not back to school work. I took myself to the doctor to get diagnosed with bronchitis and an unwelcome prescription for prednisone— grateful for the medical professional who believed me that I needed the full 10 day run. I hate needing the full 10 day run of it.

My biggest worry is we might have got family sick, including the newborn baby, my new great-niece.

I did get a lot of reading done the last couple of days — once I got over the extreme exhaustion.

There’s something so disorienting about being so sick that you can’t do anything but sleep for days and time and life pass you by. Especially when you miss the start of a major liturgical season. Well it won’t be the first time we’ve missed a significant chunk of Advent due to illness. The irony is that younger son probably picked this up selling Christmas wreaths with his scout troop. Unless he picked it up at the museum last Monday. I wanted to write about our trip to the museum where we met up with Zina Gomez-Liss and Jennifer Degani and family. I lost a lot of the momentum on that.

I have many things I’d like to write, including some Advent stuff, but instead you get bad free-verse poetry about being sick. Hopefully now that I’ve got that out of my system we can move on to better things.

Also, here are a couple of sunset pictures from the parking lot at my doctor’s office last night.

1. My favorite Thanksgiving food this year was a gluten-free stuffing that I innovated. I used a Schar brand multigrain sourdough bread that I love, toasted it. And then added sautéed celery, onion, mushroom, and garlic. Some herbes de Provence, sage, marjoram. And a slug of white wine. Lots of butter and chicken stock. It was glorious. The first time I’ve had stuffing in a few years.