Sam was out of school three days this week — Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday with that freaking norovirus. Blech! Then he was all ready to go back to school today, Thursday. We were all ready. We were there; it was within our sight. I was ready to kiss the ground at the bus stop when the bus pulled away. I had his lunch packed up the night beforehand. YES! But then lo and behold, NO! There was that God-awful sound in the middle of the night from down the hall. In my delirium I tried to tell myself, “Oh, he’s just coughing.” It was pretty obvious that it was way more than a “productive cough.” I wished it was only a nightmare, but noooooo….. The McNamee Clean Up Crew was back in business. Curses, foiled again.
Then I have to get a grip on myself. So here I am, grousing staying home with a sick kid, usually an incredibly healthy one. (That was until this week of course.) There are SO many people out there who would love to have my “problem.” I bet all those brokenhearted Newtown parents (20 sets of them!) would absolutely LOVE to hear the sound of their lost child vomiting in the middle of the night. It would probably make their hearts sing and sound like the most beautiful symphony they had ever heard. It would mean that their living nightmare was over, and their first-grader was alive, not murdered in cold blood by a psychopath. Thank God, my first-grader is here, and I need to appreciate that so much more.
I bet the parents of Martin Richard in Boston would love to spend four days at home with their son with something so minor as the stomach flu. And I bet they’d give anything so that the mother didn’t have a serious brain injury and their six-year-old daughter didn’t have an amputated leg. (That just breaks my heart, the poor little girl has suffered so much!) They’d love to have my “problem.”
It’s time to buck up and stop complaining because I am so very blessed. Instead of kvetching I should be feeling deep gratitude for the abundance of gifts in my life. I don’t deserve any of it, just as none of those families deserve the horrific tragedies that have destroyed their families.
So things are good around here — great, fantastic in fact. Well, I must go now. Sam has been waiting (somewhat) patiently for me to play Pokemon with him while I’ve been writing this. Pokemon normally makes me want to poke my eyes out with shards of glass, but I am determined to treat this time as a gift, which it is.
LibbY