This week, I had a little head cold. Nothing crazy awful like the flu or strep throat, just a cold. It was the one where my throat was a little scratchy, my nose was a little stuffy and I felt a little sluggish.
It was a good week to catch a cold since the kids were home from school and most of their extra curricular activities were canceled for vacation. There was none of the usual running around to further wear me down. And my husband was fabulous. Though he wasn’t on vacation, he came home and stepped up around the house. I even caught him folding laundry, without being asked. It was a Christmas miracle. I know it’s February, but it felt like Christmas.
At one point, while we worked side by side, he making his lunch for the next day and me making dinner, he suggested that I sit down. I shook my head, as this is a common refrain when I am not firing on all cylinders. And trust me, I appreciate the sentiment. But this many years into our marriage, how is it that he still doesn’t get it?
There is no mom fairy. No one is going to swoop in and make the dinner or de-ice the chickens’ water. Little elves are not going to sneak in and wash the dishes or bring in the firewood (which is good, because that would be super creepy). And though he may try, Brian cannot keep up with all the things that need doing. Partially because he’s just finished his own 12-hour work day, and partially because there are few who can satisfy my semi-OCD standards.
When I am really ill, I let all of this go. If I have a fever and the terribleness that comes with it, I simply curl up in a ball on the couch and cover my head with a blanket. From there, I cannot see any other room in the house. I am able to pretend there are no dirty dishes spilling out of the sink and onto the kitchen counter. The toothpaste stains in the bathroom sink are but a distant nightmare. And I simply choose to forget about the bits of childhood that I know are littering every single surface, in every single room.
But when it’s just a cold, these things make me twitch. And it drives me nuts that all of these things are invisible to every other being in my home. Except for the cats. They see the increased mess as an opportunity to create more mess and to make it a grosser mess by walking on things, licking things and otherwise setting off all of my OCD alarms.
I used to wonder how Brian could even suggest such a thing as sitting when there was so much to be done. I was truly baffled by the idea. But just like it took many, many years for him to notice the mess all around, threatening to destroy us, it took me a long time to understand that when he’s not feeling well, nothing else matters. He just sits.
The first few times this happened, I got really mad. OK, the first 15 years this happened, I got really mad. It seemed kind of lazy. I mean, it’s not like he was dying. It was just a little cold.
There’s this new commercial out there for some kind of cold medicine and it shows an adult opening a door and telling the person in the room that they’re going to have to take a sick day. The camera switches into the room and it’s a small child, staring blankly at his/her parent’s ridiculous suggestion. The voice over tells us that parents don’t get a sick day. Yes! Finally, someone gets it. This is what I’ve been trying to tell Brian for years.
And yet, somehow, he has always managed to get a sick day from the kids. I guess it’s because I was always the stay-at-home mom. If he was sick, I just added another person to the list of those needing care. If I was sick, it just couldn’t matter. I remember one morning when he was leaving for work at 4 a.m., he had to step over me. I was sitting on the floor, nursing an infant and vomiting over her head into a bucket. There was no sick day.
As the kids have gotten older and can hold their own, I’ve watched Brian sit down, when there are clearly things to be done, and observe him like he’s an exhibit at the zoo. There is a bit of awe and a good dose of wonder. What must that be like? How does the filth around him not make him crazy? If I taunt him, will he start throwing things at me?
There is surely a place for balance. At a certain point during my cold, I couldn’t stand up anymore. The laundry was going to have to wait to be folded. I went over to the couch and rested my weary bones. And I was there at least 90 seconds before I noticed the calendar from 2014 still hanging and the three hand wash dishes left in the sink. No way was I waiting for the elves.
I got through this little bump in the road of life by drinking gallons of tea. Throat tea, immune tea and a new favorite, Echinacea elderberry tea, loaded with raw honey and lemon, kept my throat soothed and my body warmed. And at night, I tossed in a little whiskey for the mandatory hot toddy. That’s how I do colds.
If you’re adverse to these methods, you can break out the big guns: raw garlic. I’ve never trusted garlic pills and with the new study showing many vitamins are just stuffed with whatever junk the manufacturer felt like tossing in, I feel justified. Instead, at the first sign of illness (and even pretty far into illness), peel a clove of garlic. If it’s small enough, swallow it like a pill. If not, cut it up until the pieces are small enough to swallow whole. Repeat every few hours. Garlic is a natural antibiotic and all around awesome bulb. I suggest keeping some in the house at all times. As an added bonus, you won’t have to worry about vampires.
Laurie Nigro, a mother of two, is passionate about her family, her community, and natural living. Laurie resides in downtown Riverhead and is co-founder of the River and Roots Community Garden on West Main Street.
[contact-form-7 id=”27986″ title=”Write to Laurie”]
