'I Didn't Play All Day'

She has strep.

We suspected as much this morning, when she woke up complaining about her throat. She seemed fine otherwise. She even finished the final six Valentine’s Day cards for her classmates. Melissa took her to the doctor, a trip that lasted an hour and a half. Then there was confusion over whether she should take the prescribed cephalosporin antibiotic, because we think she developed a rash a year ago when taking another antibiotic in the same family. That necessitated two trips to the CVS, leavened by one to the Super Fresh, where we acquired a sick-day treat: two kinds of jello, lime and, after much deliberation, grape.

In between there was some TV and some lethargically slurped chicken-noodle soup for lunch, during which she asserted, again, for her own benefit as much as mine, “I’ve been very healthy. I haven’t thrown up since I was two.” Then she tried to figure out what year that was, eventually settling on the right one, 2004.

The crash began after lunch, when I could see her face redenning and her eyes darkening. After taking the pink medicine, with a Benadryl chaser, we sat on the couch and I read a chapter of On the Banks of Plum Creek. (Grasshoppers ravage the wheat crop; Pa walks heads out on a couple-hundred-mile walk back East to find work picking crops.) Then she collapsed in a heap. She napped for three and a half hours, first on the couch, then in our bed, where I changed her into her jammie bottoms. (She’s got a little rash around her belly button.) I heard her stir and came downstairs to find her sitting upright, regenerated.

The revival was long enough for two small bowls of lime jello, a viewing of a Disney video (a medley of saccharine movie songs), a bit of mac and cheese and peas and corn, a second viewing of the Disney ad and a third bowl of jello. Then came the crash. Melissa carried her limp body upstairs. While I cleaned up, Chloe and Melissa did some secret project—another Valentine? she made three additional cards this morning that we are forbidden from turning over—and then she knew it was time for bed. After a gag reflex and tears, the medicine was diluted with chocolate syrup, a trick of which Melissa had reminded her. She didn’t want to floss. She didn’t want to do her mouthwash. She's still sick.

“I didn’t play all day,” she announced.

But she desperately wants to go to school for the Valentine’s party tomorrow. I explained that the doctor said she had to wait 24 hours from her first dose of medicine before she could return, and that meant she couldn’t go until after lunch. There were tears for fear of being unable to attend. Then a second round of questioning on the reason for the day-long wait. Then self-assurance that she would be well enough to make it by afternoon. Then a promise from me to take her to the party, then to Scrabble club after school, then home.

“I want to sleep here all night,” the little fragile creature said in our bed, after a reading by mom of Stellina, a book about another fragile bird. She sighed a resigned “I love you, too,” to me and rolled over to sleep. Mother and daughter are lying there right now.

'Oh-kay'

The kids are lined up at tables in the hallway this afternoon—not because of a basketball game but because the gym is being used for election polling. (Ours is at a school a block away. I voted for Obama.) I walk up and down the rows before I see Chloe nestled like a bear cub among a den of teachers.

“Hi, sweetie!” I say. Seeing her with the teachers instead of her friends, I immediately fear she had relapsed over T.J. She turns around and melts instantly. “I feel sick, daddy,” she says. I scoop her up from the picnic table. She buries her face in my shoulder and begins weeping. She is indeed flush. I tell Mr. Jones he should never hesitate to call me, and tell Chloe she can always ask Mr. Jones to call me if she wants to come home early. And I instantly feel guilty for waiting until 5:00 to get her.

She gets so fragile! She does whatever you tell her. Buttons up. Puts on her matching hat and gloves. Holds your hand. Steps gingerly on the icy sidewalks and steps. “I don’t want to go to Scrabble today,” she says, climbing into the car. “I’m cold.” “I want to go home.” She bursts into tears again. “We can watch some TV when we get home,” I promise. “Oh-kay,” she sighs.

We get home. We carefully navigate the steps. She tries for a moment but can’t muster the strength even to open the front gate. She can’t untie her bright red Chuck Taylors. As I do it, I notice that her pant legs are wet. “Let’s go up and put on some dry pants,” I say. “I want new socks, too,” she replies. I suggest her red long johns under a pair of pants for warmth. She demurs. “I want to put on my fuzzy jammies with the dots.” Done. And a sweatshirt. “Oh-kay.”

She nestles under a blanket watching Max and Ruby. I leave her for a few minutes to finish work. I return and warm up leftover Thai noodles and 'wave some frozen peas. She turns off the TV herself, climbs into her chair, picks at her food, fingers the Valentine stickers I’d bought for her that afternoon. We talk about how healthy she’s always been. She reminds me that she hasn’t thrown up since she was 2, in her crib, when Imee was sitting for her one night. (She proceeded to projectile vomit twice more after we returned home.) I see the imprinting immediately: I tell her how healthy she’s been. She repeats it, and accepts it as an explanation for why she hasn’t thrown up in three years. She asks whether she'll throw up now. I tell her she won’t; she doesn’t have a tummy virus, I say, but a sore throat and slight fever. She doesn’t ask for dessert.

But she revives. She wants to make the Valentine’s cards for her class. (Last week we decorated a shoebox in pink and red construction paper, with cut-out and taped-on paper hearts. She was very proud to make a loop of Scotch tape.) She tests designs. She doesn’t fuss when she makes mistakes, in writing or drawing, and I just hand over a new rectangular piece of the red or white poster board I’d bought and cut up earlier so she can start anew.


The teachers get cards in the shape of hearts, the fronts decorated with faces. The students get the rectangles. Her style evolves from elaborate decoration with multiple stickers—tiny multicolored hearts and raised, glassy hearts and flowers in purple, red and blue—to a simple design. “To Max (Charles, Ryan, Ella Rose). Love, Chloe.” She adds the comma at my suggestion, and then does it every time. Then a heart drawn in purple or black, colored in with red marker, adorned with stickers. After completing a card for Simone, she goes back to add something: Jones Mister, she writes. “It's a joke that me and Simone and Jeremy have.” She adds a tiny yellow heart for a period. Then she has an idea and adds a straight line atop it: an exclamation point. When each card is done, she carefully places a check mark next to the name on list the teachers sent home, sometimes remarking on the quality of her check.

After creating a yeoman 16 cards—13 for her classmates, three for the teachers—Chloe realizes she’s spent. “I’ll finish the rest tomorrow,” she announces. We head upstairs. She changes into her jammy top. She pees. She washes. She chews three children’s Tylenol tablets—she approves the taste; grape—a new medicine. We brush. She doesn’t want to floss or use her pink bubble-gum mouthwash. She’s too tired. She climbs into our bed. She wants to know if she'll be better tomorrow. She doesn't want to miss Valentine's Day on Thursday. We read one chapter of On the Banks of Plum Creek—grasshoppers decimate the wheat crop; it's a bad story—and she is asleep in minutes.