Sometimes When It's A Long Day....

For the first time in my life, I’ve succumbed to the flu. I caught it from my cousin John, in Phoenix, as he whizzed through, pecked us all on the cheeks, then drove off to Tucson. He was sick by that night, and I was sick three days later.

Other than the occasional “stomach flu”, which I gather is a misnomer, I’ve never had a flu shot, and I’ve never had the flu. Until this year. I’ve spent the last two weeks in my bedroom slippers and my sweat pants, wondering why my amazing immune system isn’t fighting this harder. My granddaughters, who have never seen me sick, are wondering what’s wrong, just as I wondered about my grandmother Momo, the one year she got the flu.

I was only nine years old, but I remember it so clearly – maybe because my mom designated me, the youngest of my siblings, to be the nurse. My grandmother lived with us, but had her own separate rooms, and especially during school we didn’t see her in the mornings. This particular morning, though, we heard her yelling. We ran in, and she was standing in front of her Murphy sink, clutching the faucet, white as a ghost. My mom and my older brother lowered her to the floor, and then my mom told me to watch my grandmother while she called the doctor. My sister and brother were scuttled off to school, and I sat beside Momo on the floor until she felt ready to climb into bed.

It was the flu – and Dr. Carlson, who normally didn’t make house calls, did in this case. She was 76 that year, and although I’m 60 I know now what she meant when she said she felt “shaky and weak.”

Liz, too, has the flu, plus a job and two-year-old Ella. Oh, and she’s also pregnant. Life has been tough for the past few weeks, and I think Ella summed it up for all of us one day last week.

Liz emailed and said all day Ella had been sort of screaming – not shrieking, exactly – but letting herself be heard in a high-pitched, unusual-for-Ella way. After ignoring the first few outbursts, Liz finally asked her just-turned-two daughter, “Ella! Why are you screaming today?”

Ella replied, “Sometimes when it’s a long day, Ella needs to scream.”

Momo, you would have loved this tiny great-great granddaughter!