Our family operates like a sailboat. My husband is the sails, my oldest the waters on which we move, my youngest the crew and I’m the boat.
When my husband isn’t feeling well it’s like the sails aren’t up. We’re still afloat and surviving just not moving that quick. When my youngest is sick he we’re still sailing but not with much ease. My little guy is tough and when he doesn’t feel good it doesn’t really put a damper on anything. He whines for me a little more than normal and just wants to be held. My oldest, however, can be a beast like the sea. When he’s not feeling well he rocks the entire boat. Everyone is pushed around and he makes life a little rough on us all. We can still function but with great difficulty.
And then there is me.
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When I was in school and sick I never stayed home. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, not overly “motherly” and had her routine. In order to not interrupt said routine we had to stay in our rooms the entire day and sleep. Sounds like heaven, right? Except my brother and my room were not like the typical rooms kids have these days. We didn’t have phones, TVs or anything electronic in them. We could read a book or sleep. I can remember one time I stayed home sick from school. I didn’t get soup or a cold wash cloth on my head instead I got told that if I was well enough to watch TV I was well enough for chores and left overs from the night before. To me, school was more fun.
I’ve always preferred natural healing over medicine. It worked out pretty perfectly that my mom would buy a set of books (before you could find absolutely everything on the internet) and within the set there would be a natural remedy book. I can’t even remember how many I’ve read over the years, but I know that I still have a couple healing books on my bookshelf.
Honey, in my opinion, is the utmost superfood. It’s antibacterial, full of antioxidants, antiseptic, great for the immune system, for coughs and sore throats. Burts Bees has the best lip balm on the market. Apparently the bees don’t know I’m on their side, because I got stung by a little prick yesterday.
My husband believes in Rumple Minze as a cold curer and I believe in hot tea with honey and lemon. He’s usually sick 2-3 times longer than me.
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Two weeks ago my youngest got sick. He had a fever and sore throat. A couple days later it hit my oldest. Because I refuse to turn down a kiss from either of them anytime they want to give them out, I got sick. It started for me mid day a couple Wednesdays ago. The sore throat hit me out of nowhere. Because it was just a sore throat I drink some hot tea with honey and lemon and went on about my day. Had I known what was really going to happen, I would have cancelled everything and slept for the next two days straight. Instead I went about my day as planned and went to the parent / teacher meeting to discuss Bash before he started school. In hindsight I was probably contagious and should have sent my husband but he didn’t want to go and sent me instead. I really hope the teacher didn’t catch what I had.
Later that night I had the chills and a fever that kept me up all night long. I called in sick and luckily for me the boys kept themselves pretty occupied while I rested. They played together or we watched movies for the majority of the day. Luckily the fever only lasted 24 hours but the sore throat is literally still here. I can’t seem to shake it. Honestly because of the 90 day Oxygen Magazine challenge I’m in I didn’t drink as much hot tea with honey and lemon. Let’s face it, honey (although natural) is basically calorie packed sugar and I can not go backward with my training! I might have to give in and just have a few glasses of tea with honey in hopes I recover. It’s getting a little ridiculous.
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Over the last 10 or so days that I’ve been not myself, I’ve realized that I’m the sailboat. When everyone else is sick we get along just fine. Sure we might not be sailing full speed ahead into the crystal clear waters with all hands on deck but we’re sailing! When I’m sick, nothing gets done. No one cleans, no one does the laundry, no one does the dishes or reminds little ones they need to take a bath. The entire world our family lives in is chaos when I’m sick. Luckily, since we’ve been shipwrecked, the small lifeboat we had aboard saved us and we’re slowing picking up the sails and getting back to being in business. It has definitely taken a long enough time to get there.
Stay healthy. Much love,
Jes xoxo