The family that is sick together, sticks together.

Someday, I will lovingly needlepoint this sentiment and hang it over hearth. Little hypodermic needles, Amoxicillin bottles, and cans of Lysol will be immortalized by the redundant dainty X. It shouldn’t be difficult to paint a picture of Streptococcus with varying shades of green thread. I am still working on the best way to represent the concept of a feverish child without involving flames.

All five of the kids are or were sick this week. It started with Sam, who inspired Tommy to join him on the couch. They’ve always been pals. Aidan was close on Tommy’s heels. A brief reprieve and false sense of bullet-dodging crumbled when Ryley succumbed after a valiant, short-lived, apparent invincibility against the germies. Joel rounds out the gang, developing his fever this morning just in time for a visit with my parents and my in-laws this weekend. 

Ryley seemed to be the strongest. But when the mighty fall, they mightily crash. The other kids managed to get through their illnesses with one doctor visit. Ryley ended up in the ER very early this morning with a nasty case of croup.

He came into our bedroom gasping “I can’t breathe!” We hustled him downstairs and gave a breathing treatment to him, then took him outside in the cold night air. It didn’t help. I called the pediatrician’s office and was told to take him to the hospital. Now.

Talk to me, Ryley. But not too much. Just tell me how you are doing. Let me know if you are getting worse.

I drove and talked to him, glancing back. His shoulders moved up and down. He barked coughs described by doctors and mothers as a seal’s. If I were a seal, I’d be insulted. Do seals sing McDonald’s jingles and Stevie Wonder hits when they have coughs? I took comfort in the hacking racket coming from the middle bench seat because it meant consciousness, but I still kept my right foot pressed firmly on the gas pedal. I got to the ER in good time and hustled him inside.

The waiting room was temporarily empty, aside from a triage nurse and a security guard. We walked up to the desk and she asked what the problem was. Ryley barked on cue and she said “croup!” We were taken back into the land of the curtained rooms and steel-hard beds on wheels. We were told someone would be with us shortly.

I removed Ryley’s shoes and decided to look at his chest to see if he was sucking in around his ribs. That is when I noticed his bellybutton.

Some time yesterday, before he swallowed a seal, he decided to color his bellybutton and the surrounding skin a lovely shade of blue. Normally, his marker skills are top-notch for a first grader, but not this time. It looked like a half-hearted bellybutton decorating job and just as I was about to open my mouth to comment on my finding he wheezed “don’t laugh.” I didn’t. I wasn’t mad, wasn’t annoyed, wasn’t embarrassed by the prospect of the doctor seeing Ryley’s creative side.

Soon the doctor came into our little million dollar slice of hospital and summed up what needed to be done. Meds for his fever, steroids for the croup, a cool mist breathing treatment, and observation. He peeked in Ryley’s ears, looked in Ryleys’ throat and listened to Ryley’s breathing with his stethoscope, over his Spongebob pajama shirt. The doctor never saw the blue umbilicus.

It remained our secret in a place where there are no secrets. The ER is where thin fabric separates the dying from the mop wielding janitor and the mother with her blue-bellybuttoned boy who was going to be okay. Just watch him for the next few days.

Oh, I will. I wasn’t watching when he tricked-out his navel. All I can hope and pray for as a mother is to recognize when to watch and when it’s okay to turn my head away. And when not to laugh.

It seems to me that the problem with diaries, and the reason that most of them are so boring, is that every day we vacillate between examining our hangnails and speculating on cosmic order.  ~Ann Beattie, Picturing Will, 1989

The perfect way to score well in a blogging award contest is to cease writing for awhile and question the entire medium. 

I am deeply immersed in Gilead  and have discovered when I am not blogging I don’t miss it very much. I am not quitting blogging. I am going to approach it differently. Instead of putting on my “I’m Blogging This” t-shirt I would rather put on my “I’m Not Blogging This” t-shirt. I am tired of approaching life as if it were Blog Material. It is a self-conscious and frankly tiresome way to go through life.

When I was born, my fingers weren’t curled over A, S, D, F, J, K, L, and ;. As an eight-year-old riding my bike down dusty H Road in Grand Junction, Colorado in search of wild asparagus to stuff in the plastic handlebar basket, I wasn’t trying to think of a catchy title.

But wow, how I loved life and the rush of wondering if my wheels were going to slip out from under me because of grusome algae in the gutters. The meadowlarks guarded the ditches with their song, always present to the point my little brother called them “asparagus birds”. I marvelled at the big fat stalks barely contained by plastic faded daisies. I pictured my mom steaming the bounty for dinner and felt pride I could provide something to my family. I rode home with one hand on the rubber grip and the other slapping mosquitos and I knew after dinner my mom would dab me with pink Calamine, the only makeup I wore for years.

I didn’t need to shout it from the rooftops, or push an enter button. I never had the need to return later to see comments or check the stat-counter. Such a childhood would have been a wreck. How many things did I treasure in my heart because they were private, solemn, overwhelming, sense-consuming, joyful and mine.  They didn’t belong to Google or Technorati or inclusion on a certain blogroll.

I learned a hard lesson this past week. Someone took something I wrote on this blog and passed it off as theirs. It angered me. It hurt me a great deal, because it was something deeply personal. I no longer wish to provide material to the malevolent or uncaring. My first instinct is to back off from being open and vulnerable—I’ve toyed with the idea of shutting the whole thing down, frankly.

But I’ve come too far and developed many relationships with people I genuinely like and care for. Please be patient with me as I decide what to write next.  And why.