I’ve got the flu. This one’s a knock-out. Throbbing head, aching limbs, dank, gargling cough…ample opportunity to feel sorry for myself and to get other people to feel sorry for me too. I put myself to bed last night with a series of grunts and moans, sighing long and loud as I tied my sheets in knots.
I called my Mum. I always call my Mum when I’m sick – a weak substitute for an in-person mother, with accompanying vegetable soup and buttered toast. I got all emotional on the phone, as years of tension and angst melted into the primordial need to be mothered. I thought about the grown men on battlefields of the wars of old, and how, in their dying minutes, they called out for their Mums. I’m feeling a little teary as I write this now.
Dimitri tells me that you need to make a big stockpile of soup at the beginning of an illness, while you still have the strength. There are tricks to having no one to take care of you, he says. His words are so sad I want to cry again.
I lie on the carpet in front of the heater, listening to Regina Spektor and watching the sky whip by beyond my festering living room. A winter sun streams through the glass and warms my face. I close my eyes and imagine that God is smiling down on me. Life is so beautiful, I think through a throbbing head. Even in my deepest darkness, the universe shines bright.
I open my eyes again and see that the sky has turned a solid dreary white. Well that sucks. I pull out a crusty handkerchief and blow my nose.
3 comments:
Oh darling, I hope you feel better soon.
I remember when I first experienced for myself that need for mothering. I wasn't feel well at all when I was in cusco. I climbed into bed and all I wanted was my mummy. I got a little teary then. The second time I got sick I was living in this little room behind this craft shop... I realised that I was pretty screwed if I got really sick, it may have taken a couple of days before people realised that I haven't been seen for a while... and even then I don't know if anyone would have actually looked for me.
I appreciate my Mum a lot more now!
Sorry to hear you're sick love. Hopefully your housemates look after you and you're feeling better soon.
It doesn't seem to have affected your writing. :-D
Thanks Tim and thanks Georgina!
Georgina - what a lonely realisation! That people might not notice that you were sick! Reminds me of elderly people who die in their apartments and no-one notices for weeks on end. Travel can be very lonely. I remember getting sick in Mexico City, and lying in a dorm with the bed shaking to the beat of the nightclub on the roof. I really wanted my Mum then too!
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