In Sickness and in Sickness

Last week, the whole family was sick with some kind of evil upper respiratory virus that included stomach complications. No need for gross detail, just allow "complications" convey what I mean here. The girls each ran fevers, had cruddy colds and suffered through hacking coughs, which kept them home from school for a few days. I am finishing up the virus myself, with an earache and laryngitis, but  Mike was hit the worst, by far.   Saturday evening, there was the all over ache of fever, accompanied by chills.  These were layered with a pounding headache, a sore throat, and sinus congestion.  By Sunday night, he was crawling to bed before dinner, saying "I have to try to sleep this off, so I can go in to work tomorrow."  By two a.m., he was experiencing those "complications," and dragging himself back to bed, stopping only long enough to email his boss to let him know that the trip downtown to work was not going to happen.  

He couldn't really eat on Monday, though he kept up a regimen of acetaminophen and tried to stay hydrated.  "I should feel better tomorrow," he said around five o'clock, before going to sleep only five hours before his regular bed time.  The sleeping part didn't go all that well, though, and the aches and pains persisted and were joined by a tremendous cough.  Rather than detail the rest of the week, I will just say that he felt like a pile of crap and couldn't really shake it.  He didn't even feel well enough to get himself to the doctor's office (when you feel like hell, public transportation is no small undertaking) until the end of the week.  Then, he was given antibiotics which finally set him on the road to recovery, as magic wonder drugs they are supposed to do. He went back to work today, though he was clearly dragging by the time he got home.

If I haven't lost you in the description of my husband's week of illness, you might at least be wondering why, in the name of all that's holy, I would devote such a long paragraph to such a thing.  It might just be that illness overwhelmed me this week.  Frankly, I got to a point this Saturday where the sound of anyone coughing made me want to hit myself in the head with a large hammer.  Among the four of us, the sputtering, stuttering, horking sound was constant, filling the apartment like a cacophonous piece of modern music composed to irritate and aggravate the listener.  Maybe, because I have been sick myself, I was just fascinated by the fact that someone could be sicker.

I can't actually remember when I've seen Mike this sick, even though we've certainly taken turns suffering through colds and stomach bugs.  And we both get migraines.  And of course, there were my two pregnancies, which, while not technically illnesses, offered him the chance to see me wretchedly ill and in tremendous pain. (Though he has said he did enjoy seeing me practically bite the head off the poor resident who tried, in vain, to administer an epidural while I was in labor with Delia. Or was it Fiona?  Funny how those episodes kind of run together.) I have been with him through some awfully invasive tests and a singularly harrowing trip to the emergency room, not to mention surgery in response to cancer. We've also waited (and worried) together for test results. It sounds like a lot of suffering, when you stack it up like that, and we have only just started to grow old-- him first of course, because I am his much younger wife...

This is the thing though, it's right out of the vows, right?  Sickness and health.  Richer and poorer.  As long as we both shall live.  Even when it seems like a lot more sickness and a lot less richer, we've gotten through it together.  This sick week was a reminder of that.  As he started to feel better this weekend, Mike put it well, "I wouldn't want to be sick with anyone but you, sweetie."  And even though I can't wait until the coughing stops, that goes double for me.  

Marriage Rules for Little Girls

Future Mrs. Rich Guy?
 

The other night, as Delia rearranged the peas and chicken on her dinner plate to make it appear that she was actually eating, she announced that she "wanted to marry a rich husband."  Swallowing my chicken and the jolt of fear that arose because she is already contemplating marriage, I asked her why she thought that was a good idea.  She was very matter of fact, noting that if she married someone rich, she could have a big house, go on vacations, and get lots of clothes and her own car and anything else she might need.  This is the first year she has seemed concerned about our family's comparative lack of stuff, and apparently it is shaping her ideas about a lot of things.  Because she has visited the houses of school friends, she is less satisfied with our apartment, and as every girl who has had to share a room with her sister is bound to do, she is lobbying for her own room. "We could all have our own rooms if we had a house," she says, though she graciously allows, "you and Daddy could still share, if you wanted to..."  We do.  Thanks.  

But before we could turn the discussion away from lifetime commitments to talk about how having a lot of stuff isn't always so important, Fiona chimed in, "M used to have a lot of money, but he doesn't anymore and I love him anyway."

Fiona is in an imaginary committed relationship with a three foot tall plastic display version of a yellow peanut M&M.  He was gifted to her before we left Boston by my CVS manager, who not only wanted to get it off his sales floor, but who was also touched by the true love of a girl and her candy pal.  She can call him just "M" as a nickname, because he's her boyfriend.  All of her dolls and stuffed animals are their children and she tells us often what he thinks about situations that arise with 'their kids' at school and about stuff happening on television.  M has a lot of strong opinions, and I don't agree with all of them, but at least I know he's from a good home and he doesn't have a motorcycle that I have to worry about Fiona riding on the back of.  We hope they're very happy together until she's about thirty, which is the age Mike has decided the girls will be allowed to date.



Fiona's main squeeze.  A model boyfriend.

The discussion of marriage continued when I asked Delia, "Don't you think love is more important than money when you decide who to marry?"  Mike was also interested in the answer to that one.  Again, she was matter of fact, "Well, if he was rich, he could buy me lots of presents and then I would love him." She paused for a minute, pretending to chew some peas, and possibly because she realized that this might be kind of shallow, she added, "I'm sure I could find someone who is nice and rich, and I would love him because he was nice, and he would still be rich.  Then I would have the best of both."  There it was, the admonishment of parents through the centuries:  It's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one. Out of the mouths of babes, right?
We were at the table for a while, because Delia never did really did make any progress on her dinner, so we discussed the possibility of her becoming rich herself.  She had taken this for granted, assuming she would have a career (as a rock star or an astronaut or a professor) and her own money, but she was clear that her future partner should have his own too, because then they would not have to worry about money for sure.  "And I might want to take time off to stay home with babies, or he might, so we both need to have money." 

It all seems so simple when a six year old explains it to you. 

Later, I found myself wondering why I hadn't thought of all of this when I was her age, because I certainly don't remember thinking about it then.  My sons are now old enough to be in real committed relationships, but I don't remember either of them thinking about who they were going to marry, let alone specifying that money was important, when they were Delia's age.  We certainly lacked stuff when they were growing up too, but neither of them seemed to think that marrying money was the way to get it, even when they were old enough to make those choices for real.  My marriage to their dad had been such a disaster-- the stuff of Lifetime movies, really, complete with a final escape with the kids' toys and clothes loaded into black trash bags-- that I used to worry the boys would have trouble with their relationships.  I can happily say this has not been the case.  They are both good men with good women in their lives.  I don't offer advice, unless I'm asked. And I'm usually not, which is okay.

Is it different with girls, though?  It already seems that it is.  It is also a new generation of girls, with lots of options that weren't on the table when I was growing up.  Maybe I wouldn't have messed up so badly the first time if I'd had Delia's confidently pragmatic attitude.  On the other hand, maybe I wouldn't appreciate Mike the way I do now if I hadn't been through something so awful.  Nah, he's great-- I would've loved him no matter what. 

Still, as we finally cleared the plates, after Mike and Fiona had gone in to muck out the girls' room in preparation for bedtime, I told Delia that even though it does really kinda suck to be poor, the real trick to marriage is finding the person you want to be with, no matter what else happens. "Yeah," she said, "like they say on a wedding, for better and worse, for richer and poorer, and then they both say I do and they kiss." 

"Yeah, just like that, " I said.  And she giggled, because she's six.