When I am sick, and any relative more than 15 years older is in the house, I feel like a little kid. That is true to some extent at all times, but never more so than when I am sick.
“Maybe,” my little brother would say, “it is because you act like a baby.”
“Shut up,” I would answer if he said it, “this is not your blog.”
Being sick can be scary. It wasn’t scary to be sick in Boise at my Aunt’s house. It was embarrassing. The timing was terrible. I was worried about making the kind of mess in someone else’s house that you wouldn’t even want to make in your own. But I wasn’t scared. My Aunt and Uncle were there. My little brother the RN was there, my sister-in-law the pharmacist was there. I didn’t have to worry too much about a disaster, other than terminal embarrassment. Not that anyone would have made me feel embarrassed except me. You know how that is.
Being sick is scary when you are alone.
When I was 20, I got very sick about a month or so after I moved to France. I didn’t really know anyone yet, except this guy I had just started dating. I didn’t have a telephone. The only bathroom in the building was shared, and down a steep, slippery set of stairs. I was sick enough that I was pretty unsteady on my feet, and it was the type of sick that made having a toilet nearby more than a convenience. In the middle of the night, I slipped going down the stairs. I was very proud of myself for not throwing up on my way down. I also managed not to scream and wake up the neighbors. I had a very impressive bruise on one side where I landed. When I managed to limp back upstairs, it occurred to me that something Very Bad could have happened.
It did.
The next day, my new boyfriend brought me the Persian soup his mother used to make for him when he was sick, and I threw up on him. When you are twenty, that is a far more scary thing than death or disability. It didn’t scare him away, but he didn’t make me Ash Reshteh again either. I’m sure it is delicious, but you just don’t put green soup with sour cream in it in front of someone who is already turning green herself. It’s just a bad plan.
He stayed at my place and slept on a mattress on the floor until I was well enough to get downstairs without falling. Even though I was 20, and there were no “real” adults around, I felt like a little kid because someone was taking care of me.
I wonder if that feeling ever goes away?
The scary part probably never does.
Today I am playing grownup, a little, to my sick roommate. I brought her a thermometer and ice chips. Made sure we had crackers and ginger ale. It’s just an act though.
Everyone knows my little brother is the real grownup sibling.
And yes. There is an obvious connection here that should be made, but I don’t know if it will be. My Dad. He lived alone, but his little sister who is the grown up one (like my own little brother is) looked after him as much as he would let her.
I wonder if he felt like a little kid the way I do when I get sick. Or if he felt like that all the time.
That is a kind of sick and alone I don’t think I am ready to think about or write about at this point.
Am I being chicken? For sure.
Maybe it’s for another day. It’s not something I would be very motivated to tell. Partly because it’s mostly not my story. Mostly because it’s not a story that I come off well in.
It’s in there though.