The Gift That Keeps On Giving (01-08-07)

For the first time since I moved away from Kansas City, I did not make it home during the holiday season. My family and I were all packed up, the kids were getting their seatbelts on, when our son announced that he did not feel well.

“My stomach hurts. I think I’m going to be sick.”

Well, you can imagine our response. Any parent has been there. It is one of the main rites of initiation in parenthood, those not-so-magic words, “I’m going to be sick…”

I have been a dad long enough to know NOT to mess around. “Out!” I ordered, and no sooner did he clear the door of the van before the contents of breakfast and dinner the night before find their way to the garage floor.

It never ceases to amaze me how fast children can go from a state of seemingly perfect health to explosive illness, and then back again. Within seconds, our boy was smiling and claiming to feel fine. “I just need to lie down a little. I really feel much better.”

Of course an hour later he went from sixty to zero, this time on the dining room floor. Hey, at least both incidents were easy to clean up.

So our son had an obvious case of the stomach flu, and by the time he was able to hold down his cheerios, we were hit with one of the worst winter weather of recent memory. With my wife so close to her delivery date, KC was just not in the cards this holiday season.

Of course, one of the truly nifty features of the flu is that it is the gift that keeps on giving. A week later my daughter uttered the famous words (she was able to make it to the bathroom, God Bless) and soon thereafter I too fell ill.

This all goes to explain why this column will be so brief. Honestly, I have been fighting the stupid flu all weekend and I am just grateful that I can again ingest solid food, albeit that food still consists of soup or scrambled eggs. I was an inch away from just skipping the column all together. I mean I was in school one day last week, and any perspective I might have had during my one day on the job has since been flushed away with all the contents of my digestive system.

But then I remembered something important. I don’t write these columns because I have to. I don’t write these columns because I feel any obligation to anyone. I write these columns because I enjoy writing these columns. I remembered the satisfaction I receive every time I sit in front of an empty screen and find something to say and some way to say it.

Most importantly, I remembered how writing these columns make me feel. And right now, I feel pretty lousy. Better, but overall, I feel like a 30 something man who has just been through the wringer. I envy my children’s youthful resilience. Kids bounce back. I just seem to bounce.

However, now that this column is finished, I do feel distinctly better. Turns out that the flu isn’t the only gift that keeps on giving.