we got a sickie

[flea]

Yesterday Casper has the endless faucet runny nose, and coughed even more at school, and then got feverish as night came on, so now I'm home with her. We've given her Motrin for the fever but nothing yet for the runny nose and eyes and cough. At the moment, PBS Kids seems to be the best elixir, but maybe later we'll fetch some Dimetapp.

Lying awake with a restless and needy Casper during the various watches of the night I remembered what it was like to be sick when I was little - the orange-flavored chewable baby aspirin that we begged for more of, the grape Dimetapp that not only tasted good but made you wonderfully sleepy. I remember being quite sick with a stomach bug when I was 6 or 7 and set up in my parents' bed with a bowl to throw up into. The convalescence included saltines and flat ginger ale and round hard candies to suck. There was a program on the radio whose theme song went "It's a web like a spider's web, made of silk and light and shadow, spun by the moon in my room at night." The great thing about being a sick kid is that during the parts when you're not feeling actually awful, you feel so wrapped up in the care of your parents, all warm and cosy and loved and with no responsibilities. It's like being a baby again for a little while.

Comments

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

St. Joseph's aspirin is da bomb. Fortunate for them that just as doctors were telling everyone to stop giving aspirin to kids, they discovered that it had the exact dose required to stave off heart attacks in old folks.

We usually spent sick days watching game shows, but there are a couple of songs that I still associate with being home sick. One is "Get Off of My Cloud" and the other is "Yesterday." It's amazing how powerful those associations can be. I hear the opening bars of those songs, and I'm right back in my bunk bed.

[hecubot.livejournal.com]

Emmett was a squirmy and active boy in his toddlerhood, so his sick days were some of the best ones for extended cuddling.

I associate being sick with laying on the couch, drinking warm, liquid jello out of a brandy snifter, being covered by the blue blanket and watching game shows. My Mom would come over and put her hand on my forehead every hour and take my temperature and fix me whatever I wanted for lunch.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

My big memories of being sick are bitter aspirin hidden in treats: applesauce, or a ramekin of Mother's Special Ice Cream (Haagen Dasz). That was older, about 10 or 12; I have some vague recall of trying to fake being sick for the taste of Dimetapp around age 6.