Talkin' Bout My Joy

Addie came wandering into our room at 6am, saying (in the most cheerful voice on the planet), "You know, I really can't open my eyes! It's SO strange!"

Damn, damn, damn, I whispered to myself. Then out loud, DAMN.

Addie wakes up every few weeks, her eyes swollen shut with pus. Out come the pinkeye drops and the saline for squirting up her nose. Kid has some clogged pipes, and they seem to often get clogged on Monday mornings when I have deadlines and conferences to attend and am already behind from being sick myself.

But then, I got over it. Cleaned out her eyes, called her school, got some chores done. Mostly we hung out in the backyard building fairy houses from twigs and leaves and dandelions, until Eric came home at noon so I could come and do some work. It was a stunningly beautiful day, so I'll take that.

(And yes, we've seen a doctor, and yes, we're cutting down on the milk products. It has been suggested to us multiple times that she will outgrow all of this crud. Throw hands up in the air).

Stuff like this doesn't bother me as much as it used to, doesn't panic me (usually). I'm able to say DAMN and then just get on with it, say a quick thanks for the grace offered by a job whose schedule I can rearrange pretty easily. Thanks for the extra, unexpected time with my kid. Thanks for the health insurance and the stockpiled eyedrops. Thanks for Nolie almost never being sick. I get it now, much better than a year ago. It's the whole deathbed thing: I won't remember the emails I could have gone through this morning, years from now, on my deathbed. But I might remember the fairy house.

Still, I wouldn't mind if there were NO more random infections in my house for a while. That's not too much to ask, I think.

By the way: here's what I've pulled from my good-times jar so far: I've learned a song by Randy Newman on the piano, and sing it when nobody's around (I sound like a tortured cat, but I commit, baby, I commit). It's not memorized yet, but maybe by summer it will be? I've written a prayer for joy. And my last pull was to learn how to juggle from YouTube. I'll let you know how it goes.

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