The Gifts of Pneumonia

Okay my title was a ploy. There aren’t any gifts. And I don’t have it, my nine year old son does. I’ll spare you the dull but trying process of getting the right diagnosis. Four doctors and a very high fever later, we are several days into the right antibiotic. But this isn’t like strep or flu or anything I’ve ever been through. There’s no real bounce back. It isn’t even like the nasty norovirus that he got when he was about two, that put him in the hospital for IV fluids. I can still recall his first smile after 72 hours of lethargy. This is something trickier. I kept pushing the return to camp, paid for, expensive. I wanted my time alone, to work. I need time alone. I’ve probably mentioned how very much I need time alone. Like, I’m not really sane without copious amounts of silence. I also wanted summer, group splash parties and beer at the river. In fact, it was the trip to the river that finally put all this in perspective. He insisted on going because he was so utterly bored with the country house we’re living in (I swear I’m not going to mention the remodel). He wanted to be around others. And after one quick dip into the water, he couldn’t stay awake, or upright. He lay on the rocks, on his towel, on his dad’s lap, then on mine, but each time we said, that’s enough, let’s get you home, he’d say, No I want to stay till everyone else leaves! When we finally insisted and his dad took him I felt a lightness, a brief respite from not having him in my direct line of sight, because the sight of him produced hand-wringing anxiety (My boy! My boy!). That break from the worry showed me just how worried I was, and had been, which in turn led me to: Eureka. This is gonna be awhile. A. While.

I’m shocked at how long the gear-down is taking me, like a hard drive slowly powering off. I’ve already mentioned my  need for solitude. I like my narrowly focused viewfinder. It’s exactly the kind of thing a writer uses to tell a story. I mean, think of the amount of material one must shut out to let a story unfurl: sound, sight, smell, for one. Then there’s  onslaught of information coming at you. This can be the hardest part, simply looking away from the plan, the news, the What’s up? Next there is the idea of food. Believe it or not, the feeding of oneself can be a major distraction. So can fitness; the body’s desire to actually be in motion. Inertia can feel like illness, but it’s pretty much a tool of the writer’s trade. Add to all of this the care and keeping of children and you can see the very real challenge the mother-writer faces. It’s their noise, their needs, their relentless energy, the sheer possibility of them—being in the same room as an eleven year old girl, at least my eleven-year-old, is like sitting near the Tasmanian Devil. A shimmering dragonfly. A hummingbird whose wings never stop beating. She runs hot; her body temperature has always been a degree above normal.

Then there is my boy. I’ve written about the slowness with which he came to language, and he’s still not a big talker. In his fevered delirium, he was chatty Cathy. He used the phrase “I expressly said” to scold his father about his ice cream order. He called his own infected breath “putrefied,” and he correctly used the word “psychopath” in its metaphorical form, which is to say, in reference to a kid at camp whose behavior was wildly unpredictable.

At first I let him watch TV and play on the iPad all day. A week in, I decided this wouldn’t do. Which left him with The Hours. It’s lonely being sick. There is only one antidote: books. We began to read The Lightning Thief. I fold my hands right now in praise and gratitude for Rick Riordan. Thank you for Percy Jackson and for bringing the beginning of western civilization to life in the modern world. Mt. Olympus on the 600th floor of the Empire State Building. The underworld located under Los Angeles, through DOA Recording Studios. Seems about right.

I read to him until my eye were drooping and my voice was cracking. Then I’d say, that’s it.  No screens and I’m going to work in the next room. You can read or sleep. AT first, he slept. But twice, he’s read ahead. Entire chapters. I think we’re getting somewhere.

I know it’s not news that a parent can simply take the screen away. I’ve always practiced limits on screen time, especially with my son, who tends towards addiction. But putting this in practice, actually saying to a begging, sick boy, “No”  was a revelation.  Faith in silence. In imagination. I’m a mother, for god’s sake, not an entertainment director. Of all people, I ought to know that good things happen in silence. In idleness. Stillness is the only way to gratitude, to imagination, to story, to sleep. In short, the good stuff.

Understanding this is a gift.