Skip to main content

Saving graces, on sick and cloudy days...


We have a household full of cold germs and sick people. We have viruses and bacteria. We have allergies and sinus infections. We have penicillin and antibiotics galore. Chills and fevers have been coming and going for almost FOUR weeks. They will not leave our home. We have been taken hostage. S.O.S. people!!


First, for those of my readers (all three of you) who don’t have children, let me begin by saying that having a sick child is a very very sad thing. They can’t breath, they don’t understand the value of fluid intake which leads to dehydration and mood swings (in my humble opinion), and they don’t feel like eating and get weak. Bringing down fevers is sometimes a monumental task. And then there is the nights. They can’t sleep. They want mama. They want mama to hold, and to soothe, and to just hang out. Which is lovely. But the next day, no matter how little the little ones sleep, they are energetic, and mama is a drowsy mess!


HOWEVER, with such days arrive many little simple abundances. I savor them all… and here are but just a few:


Each morning, my lovely Mr. Urban has been bringing me a mug of hot tea. He does other very sweet things to add joy to our otherwise nasally congested day too. For example, this morning he got the UrbanBaby dressed. And if that was not sweet enough, he put on the cutest lime and

yellow ensemble on her - his very own creation I must add, which just made the morning bright!


Yesterday, in an attempt to entice the UrbanBaby to eat, and also to give myself a break from having to cook, I decided on a mother-daughter takeout lunch from the cute cafe in the village. We ordered gourmet chicken sandwiches with extra pickles on the side. Oh we had a lovely chat the two of us, while I ate my chicken sandwich, and she dined on the pickle. Please withhold judgment; pickles are apparently very good for you!


And just as the day was over, I got a call from my sweet friend M, a tireless mom and wife, who had just sat down from her busy, busy day. She always has a good recipe and a few natural remedies, which make you feel better just hearing about them….



This morning I made it my mission to follow up on yesterday’s nutritious lunch. As I was roaming around the kitchen for ingenious ways to serve breakfast, I came across this lovely cow ice cream dish - a forgotten gift from our very own zany Princess to UrbanBaby. Viola! A delicious breakfast of oatmeal and bananas were finally enjoyed (and many kisses were given to the cow.)


Are there special things that make your sick days worth the hassle?

To Your Good Health!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FORTY THREE YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS AND FORTY DAYS

My life and the life of every Iranian I know,  is bookended by the Iranian Revolution of 1979. It doesn't matter that I was barely old enough to remember this historic event or that I spent the decades that followed it, far far away from Iran, the Revolution of 1979 is a heavy, tacky, cruel bookend that defines who we used to be, who we are and the recurring nightmares and dreams we’ve had for 43 years.  I can pinpoint with certainty the exact month after which a general feeling of displacement settled like sticky dust all over me, my family, my classroom, my teachers, our closest friends, our home, our city… In the years and decades that followed, I never experienced another event that brought such a magnitude of change to the nucleus of life.   Not in Iran, and definitely not after a whole life lived outside of Iran.  Perhaps only recently, the experience of the Trump years and the Covid-19 pandemic, the significant fear, change and frustration that both events brought to our col
Post a Comment
Read more

On Donald Trump, Crunchy Bananas and our Children... A "How To" on keeping up Spirits and Sanity

The other morning at breakfast, my four year old looked, yet again somberly, at the breakfast before her.  Despite having enthusiastically selected a hodgepodge of liberally salted hard boiled egg whites on the side of toasted hamburger buns, strawberries and vanilla yogurt and a cup of milk, she still could not bring herself to enjoy her breakfast.  Her face was wrinkled, as was mine with exasperation from yet another failed attempt at assembling a palatable breakfast for my picky eater. This one, she is quite the philosopher.  And before I could ask her why she wasn't eating, she said: "Two Things!"  Holding up two tiny fingers.  "The smells of these foods I picked, don't go with each other! And I wish Donald Trump would magically become Hillary Clinton, and the word (world) would be GREAT again".     Despite our best efforts to protect our children from the anxiety of these times, they are alert and picking up on the mood (and the lingo) in the wor
1 comment
Read more

Safa

I have always loved words.  The way some people love shiny new objects.  As soon as I heard a new word, a word that captured my imagination, my energy, my hundreds of unnamed inner thoughts and feelings, I would latch on to it with fearceness, joy and curiosity.  I have also always been intrigued by how regular old words can be used in an unexpected context and evoke bursts of unexpected feelings in the listener, such as laughter, anticipation or tears.  I would search for those words coming out of the mouths of everyone around me, and mentally catalog them like a dutiful librarian, and await the opportunity to say the words with my own mouth out loud to an audience, or better yet use it in an essay where the teacher could grade it, get a kick out of it, or read it to the whole class.      As a child I always loved the Persian word Safa .   For one thing the word sounds so simple, yet sophisticated and beautiful, and for another, each of my memories of hearing this word is stored in th
2 comments
Read more