Poor Sick Baby

Poor Cali Girl has been sick. I knew it two days ago, when, after a perfectly normal day of typical rambunctious climbing-ness, she crawled into my lap at six o'clock and fell asleep. Fell asleep, I tell you, the child who never spontaneously falls asleep, and who has to be wrestled to sleep each night, which is something between an hour-long and an all-night ordeal. I woke her up after a few minutes because she I was afraid she would wake up at bedtime and not go back to sleep, and at first she seemed okay. But my initial instincts were correct. By nine or ten she was burning up, and then woke up and vomited profusely all over the bed. As I'm sure you other parents know, tiny children can hold quite a bit of puke. Poor baby.

I have to tell you, having a mildly sick child makes me feel such incredibly profound awe over parents of truly sick children. Tears spring to my eyes when my own feverish girl wakes up disoriented and glassy-eyed and says, with a desperately insistent voice "dog? dog?", then looks around and starts sobbing with confusion and misery. Then I feel so grateful and almost ashamed of feeling sorry for myself and my sick baby when there are so many children that are truly, horrifyingly ill. My heart just cracks open with pity and sadness when I think of it. And of course, there's that tiny grain of fear that lodged itself deep in my chest the moment I first became her mother, the basic fear that can't be put more simply than this: that she might die. It doesn't haunt me or take over my life, but it is always there. That other people actually have to experience the reality of this fear is something that is hard to reconcile in this world. I've been keeping those who have sick children in my thoughts these past few days, and my heart has been aching for them.