Well, at least I know where I got it. The flu is a funny disease, all over the map; I’m in my ninth day and still far from 100%. Partly that’s because on her sixth day, Lauren suddenly got markedly worse and was desperately ill in bed, so I ran the house and kids and everything all weekend in a weakened condition.
Blogging becomes ephemeral when you have sleep deprivation and a sick wife and a normal healthy attention-hungry 9-month-old. (The seven-year old son has been wonderful, pitching in where he can and accepting that there are times when he’s just gonna have to amuse himself; I owe him.) At work, I’m doing the telecons and correspondence and form-filling that have to be done, but they’re taking all my attention when I work on them and when I finish one I stand up and walk away from the computer or phone or desk. And when the kids are in bed I sit up long enough to get centred and maybe read a few words on paper then I go to bed too.
On top of which this Worst Winter Ever isn’t done yet, every day is another sneer at Spring; grey and cold and early dimness and rain pounding in the roof; a couple of my sickest mornings there was snow on the ground, looked just like it felt inside my chest.
After supper yesterday I was nearly gibbering with exhaustion and had the TV on so the boy could watch the hockey while I did his lunch for school and something for Lauren to try to eat and straightened the kitchen and kept the baby cheery. I walked by and the hockey was boring so I grabbed the remote and the first click turned up Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris on PBS, doing an All the Roadrunning set, I left it there and stopped by when I could. Awfully pretty, wonderfully well-played, no surprises.
I even stole time to sit down and watch them play Romeo and Juliet, your basic bitter romance, and then they tacked on one of those long slow Dire Straits instrumental codas, full of shifts and stops and orchestrations and really quite totally beautiful. It made me think of Why Worry from Brothers in Arms, which also has an lovely instrumental outro, and words from its chorus:
there should be laughter after pain
there should be sunshine after rain
Which kind of helped. I’m still bleeding from the nose when I blow it and have a low-level headache that just won’t go away and a slow klunky brain with gears that don’t mesh quite right.
there should be laughter after pain
there should be sunshine after rain
And poor Lauren ate almost nothing for three days and her skin is still white as chalk. We’re both pretty healthy people so I guess there was some cosmically good (for the virus, bad for us) match between its RNA payload and our physiologies.
there should be laughter after pain
there should be sunshine after rain
And the weather forecast saying more rain, more rain, through Friday at least. Those crocuses I photographed, for most of them that’ll have been the only sun they ever saw, I’m hoping the snow wasn’t too rough on the baby daffodils.
there should be laughter after pain
there should be sunshine after rain
And as for that little lyric, I know that for some people, the pain ends because they die, and before the rain stops too. The other day I’d forced my weary bones down to the end of the street for some essentials (baby in stroller, boy trailing along) and there was this street-guy out in the rain, wild-haired, wild-eyed, muttering. I bet everywhere I hurt he hurt worse, and hey, I’ve got a nice big warm dry bed waiting for me.
I’m getting better, really. I seem to be able to write.
there should be laughter after pain
there should be sunshine after rain
