It seems to me that every winter since I’ve had children has been remarkable in some sort of epic literary fashion. There was the winter of a thousand snow days, (Anna Karenina), the winter of a million lost gloves (Three Little Kittens), and the winter of the endless muddy boots (Long Walk—er, mop). This winter, however, felt more than epic: it felt biblical. That’s because this was the winter that my house took on a decidedly Egyptian feel.
There were several reason for this. One was that we got another cat (a dreadful one), one was that our fridge was always stocked with hummus (hummus being one of the few foods that Clementine will eat), and one was because there was revolution in the air (but that’s nothing new). But the main reason my house felt so Egyptian this winter was because for a while there it felt like we were being visited by the ten plagues, one at a time.
Not the traditional plagues, of course. We didn’t have any rivers of blood, or frogs falling from the sky—but then again, the winter isn’t quite over yet, is it? It’s funny: last winter we just had one enemy to face—the dreaded snow day (or rather snow week, as it turned out). This winter, however, there have been so many different ailments—or plagues, if you will—that I can’t help but think of the ten trials visited on Pharaoh in the Old Testament.
The first plague, for us, was the stomach flu: the kind with puking and moaning. It wasn’t just us, of course: every child I know was stricken with some form of puking illness. And while puking is annoying on many levels, it is mostly for the amount of laundry it generates. (Question: How old do you have to be before you make the connection between “I’m feel like I’m going to throw up” and “I should probably get out of bed”? Answer: Old enough to do your own laundry.)
Next came the regular flu, the kind with coughing and moaning, which, in theory, should lead to less laundry, but in practice, does not. This is because of the fact that in at least half of the children I know, coughing always leads to puking. (Again, same question: How old do you have to be before you realize that coughing fits inevitably lead to puking? And again, same answer: old enough to do your own laundry.)
After that came the pink eye, something that involves no moaning whatsoever—at least not on the part of the patient. Of course, the problem with pink eye is that otherwise healthy (read: active) children must stay home for twenty-four hours, which doesn’t seem like that long until you factor in that they always manage to get it one at a time, meaning that that initial twenty-four hours can stretch out indefinitely, if you have enough children to infect and reinfect each other over and over again.
This was followed by, of all things, cold sores. Yes, just regular old cold sores, but cold sores of such intensity and duration that they qualified for plague status, too. I’m not talking about little blisters on the lips, I’m talking about huge craters that looked like something out of a Stephen King novel—you know, the one where he runs over a gypsy and gets cursed? That kind of cold sore. The kind that causes you to run a fever, meaning that, yet again, you get sent home from school.
Like I said: biblical. Of course, the nice thing for Pharaoh was that, eventually, his trials came to an end: he just had to let Moses’ people go free first. Believe me, I’ve been trying to do that for years. Unfortunately, it’s kind of hard to let your people go free when they just won’t leave.