It’s horrible when your kid is sick. Tears you up inside, makes you feel helpless. I’d rather be sick instead, please. I’ll take that illness in a heartbeat. But when your baby that is no longer a baby gets sick and has to stay home, they suddenly turn into that baby that they used to be. Like when they were one and two. They want to sit on you and do nothing, sleep on your lap. Snuggle with you in bed half the day, and eat crackers and watch cartoons in their pajamas the other half. And it’s kind of great.
Another guilty pleasure. You should feel guilty, you asshole. Happy that your kid is sick? What’s wrong with you, seriously? Except that your baby is back for a day or two and how could you not like it. Completely reliant on you. Deeply affectionate. Truly needy, appreciative. All those things that they aren’t anymore, that they’ve grown out of. You’re needed on the front line, you’re Mom-my and Dad-dy again. Here’s a simple problem that you can fix with hugs and 7-up and saltines. If only so many problems were that simple now.
I remember working in the mental hospital all those years ago, meeting the families of some of the sickest patients. Seeing the dysfunction of all of them. The constant fighting and the co-dependency. Pulling each other down even as they pulled their own hair out.
“How could they ever get well with that family?” I asked so many times. The only response ever given a shake of their head and an ‘I know, huh,’ click of the tongue.
“They need their kid to be sick,” one of the social workers finally told me. As if I had been there long enough to be clued in. That’s why those parents seemed upset because their 20 year old schizophrenic was better and ready to be released. I remember thinking how gross that was. How inconceivable. Of course, I was 23, healthy, unmarried, and without a care in the world, let alone children, so of course I couldn’t understand that at all. What the hell is wrong with these people! Let your children get well and stop clinging to their illness, of all things to hold onto! You’re pathetic!
But now I understand, at least a little. When they’re sick, they need you. Whether they just want to lie on your chest an entire afternoon and sleep, after they threw up for that eighth and last time, or their schizophrenia makes them unable to function in the big scary world without you. Dependent on you for so much of their life. They need you in the way a child needs only their parent. And that feels so good, so wonderful to be needed by your child. Your child, so far past that baby that once would fall asleep on your chest, but here she is snoring on you with a high fever. Your baby that’s 25 and can’t move out of your house because they can’t make it on their own with the voices that plague them all day. Their illness turns their clock back. You like the illness. At least a little. It brings your baby back. Your baby needs you.
So I rock in my chair like I did when you were a baby and waste the day away being a human meat pillow and relish the day wasted with you as my baby again. What a wonderful, horrible day.
And then, thank God, it’s over. You got what you needed to beat it. Thank you fever, but it’s time for you to go now. Time for my 1st grader to go back to doing cartwheels in the living room and riding the dog like an uneasy pony. Time to let go of the illness. Man we will cling to anything.
Ain’t it the truth! Healthy to recognize the need. And healthier yet to appreciate when the illness is short lived.