My Baby Is Sick
I came home from work early today. Mom picked me up.
"How are you, Mama?"
"Exhausted, Honey. Daddy and I have been moving furniture all day. Can you come home and look after Marjorie a little for me?"
"What's wrong with her? Is she bored?"
"No. She has a temperature of 102."
Neither the request nor the information really surprised me. Marjorie gets sick easily, and I have been her nurse since I was eight years old. I wanted to be a nurse when I was little, and I read biographies of Florence Nightengale, and because Burgee got sick so often I became her Florence. The moment she becomes ill, everything else goes out the window for me.
You see, when she was a baby, it was I who sang her to sleep every afternoon for her nap. Mama likes to tell the story about the time that I had gone to a friend's house, and one-year-old Marjorie opened her green eyes very wide in consternation at nap time, asking, "but who will sing me?" "Sing me" was her term for the half-hour that I spent every afternoon trying to get those long, black, curly eyelashes of hers to sweep down closed over baby cheeks.
When she was two and I was ten, the bed situation in a busy household of eight was such that we wound up sharing a twin mattress in "the girls' bedroom." Burgee was a cuddly toddler, never happy unless she could snuggle up, even in her sleep. I remember hours between midnight and six in the morning when I would try to lift a large infant off of my stomach without waking her... a process which took eternities.
As we both grew older, it was I who helped Burgee choose her clothes in the morning. She had a terrible time picking outfits, and at last I devised a method by which I spun round very fast with two different sets of clothes in my outstretched hands, and she closed her eyes, and then I stopped and she pointed and we dressed her in whatever outfit was most directly in line with her chubby little finger. It is the same principle as tossing a coin, only more dizzying.
I began to babysit for other families when I was twelve, and made almost an occupation out of it until the age of sixteen, but Burgee was always my baby. Reading aloud to her, fetching juice or soda, holding the throw-up bowl, playing nanny, making her take baths, dispensing medicine, and putting my cool hands against her hot cheeks: all these are as ingrained in me as eating and sleeping. God has blessed me with a body that is almost never ill, not even with a cold, and so I am able to nurse Burgee without having to be careful about getting sick myself.
Thus, when I got home, I ran upstairs to her pink-carpeted bedroom with its blue walls and ring of painted clouds around the ceiling. I put my hands against her cheeks. Her face was burning.
"How are you, Darling?"
She sighed. "Mmm... that feels nice."
"Finish your orange juice, and I'll get you some grape. Mama wants you to have fluids."
"Will you read Crime and Punishment to me?"
It was indeed a change to be reading of nasty Svidrigailov out of a Russian novel, rather than the fairy tales with which I soothed her when she was little. Marjorie enjoyed my representation of the drunken Swiss, though, and that was what mattered. She was too listless for conversation, and after awhile I thought that it would be best to let her sleep. I opened a window in the stuffy room, to let in sweet rain-washed air.
"Sleep, Darling."
"Mmmm..." Came the drowsy reply.
I closed the door and went away to help Mama, but not before two emotions flashed across my heart. First I thought, "My baby is sick." There was sadness in that, but the second was, "And I'm here."
I'm so very glad that I am here, right where I should be, to take care of my baby.
"How are you, Mama?"
"Exhausted, Honey. Daddy and I have been moving furniture all day. Can you come home and look after Marjorie a little for me?"
"What's wrong with her? Is she bored?"
"No. She has a temperature of 102."
Neither the request nor the information really surprised me. Marjorie gets sick easily, and I have been her nurse since I was eight years old. I wanted to be a nurse when I was little, and I read biographies of Florence Nightengale, and because Burgee got sick so often I became her Florence. The moment she becomes ill, everything else goes out the window for me.
You see, when she was a baby, it was I who sang her to sleep every afternoon for her nap. Mama likes to tell the story about the time that I had gone to a friend's house, and one-year-old Marjorie opened her green eyes very wide in consternation at nap time, asking, "but who will sing me?" "Sing me" was her term for the half-hour that I spent every afternoon trying to get those long, black, curly eyelashes of hers to sweep down closed over baby cheeks.
When she was two and I was ten, the bed situation in a busy household of eight was such that we wound up sharing a twin mattress in "the girls' bedroom." Burgee was a cuddly toddler, never happy unless she could snuggle up, even in her sleep. I remember hours between midnight and six in the morning when I would try to lift a large infant off of my stomach without waking her... a process which took eternities.
As we both grew older, it was I who helped Burgee choose her clothes in the morning. She had a terrible time picking outfits, and at last I devised a method by which I spun round very fast with two different sets of clothes in my outstretched hands, and she closed her eyes, and then I stopped and she pointed and we dressed her in whatever outfit was most directly in line with her chubby little finger. It is the same principle as tossing a coin, only more dizzying.
I began to babysit for other families when I was twelve, and made almost an occupation out of it until the age of sixteen, but Burgee was always my baby. Reading aloud to her, fetching juice or soda, holding the throw-up bowl, playing nanny, making her take baths, dispensing medicine, and putting my cool hands against her hot cheeks: all these are as ingrained in me as eating and sleeping. God has blessed me with a body that is almost never ill, not even with a cold, and so I am able to nurse Burgee without having to be careful about getting sick myself.
Thus, when I got home, I ran upstairs to her pink-carpeted bedroom with its blue walls and ring of painted clouds around the ceiling. I put my hands against her cheeks. Her face was burning.
"How are you, Darling?"
She sighed. "Mmm... that feels nice."
"Finish your orange juice, and I'll get you some grape. Mama wants you to have fluids."
"Will you read Crime and Punishment to me?"
It was indeed a change to be reading of nasty Svidrigailov out of a Russian novel, rather than the fairy tales with which I soothed her when she was little. Marjorie enjoyed my representation of the drunken Swiss, though, and that was what mattered. She was too listless for conversation, and after awhile I thought that it would be best to let her sleep. I opened a window in the stuffy room, to let in sweet rain-washed air.
"Sleep, Darling."
"Mmmm..." Came the drowsy reply.
I closed the door and went away to help Mama, but not before two emotions flashed across my heart. First I thought, "My baby is sick." There was sadness in that, but the second was, "And I'm here."
I'm so very glad that I am here, right where I should be, to take care of my baby.
posted by Praelucor at 5:53 PM
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