Snot, sniffles and bad karma
I must have put a sacred cow through a meat grinder in my last life. That's the only way I can explain my bad karma. Why do we have to deal with this snot time every year?
We can rely on it from October to March ...
... the kids get really sick at the worst possible time. When my husband is away on business and I have to complete an urgent project. When Grandma is ill and Hüti doesn't have time. When my boss is in the darkest mood and mumbles something about cutting staff. That's when the kids really get it.
... Siblings always get infections one after the other. Everyone off to the sofa, drink lots of tea with honey - and after a week we're through? That would be my wishful thinking. The reality looks like this: First, a child lies on the sofa moaning: «I'm so bored - where are you?» Then comes the evening when we dance around the bedroom: Hooray, child healthy! Hooray, tomorrow just the normal madness! Just then the next child is standing in the doorway, pale and with a sore throat. The week after, the third. And then all over again. Until spring.
... Passing on viruses works great. Our children don't like sharing anything with each other. Not the ten identically chubby Barbies. Not the monstrous amounts of Lego bricks. Not even the modelling clay, which would be really good to share. Only when it comes to sharing viruses do our children become really generous. They sneeze at us with a precision that would make even Roger Federer turn pale. They wipe their nose with their hand - and wipe it over my iPad. They leave infectious trails of mucus in our house like slugs in the garden.
... then we get caught. Somehow not surprising. We parents have done more night watches than any carers' union would allow. We're dog-tired and our immune systems are in the basement. Then finally all the children are healthy again and we force ourselves to go to work with a fever of 39 degrees. Because the boss sounds like she would otherwise renovate our office with an axe. So we dissolve our aspirin in our coffee and get going.
Being sick was still cosy without children
... Parents are not allowed to get sick. Being ill - before we had children - used to be really cosy. Reading silly newspapers, drinking my mum's chicken soup, watching Emergency Room and dreaming of George Clooney. Now I dream that the kids aren't shouting at each other while I have a splitting headache. Children fall down the stairs, cut themselves while carving, crash off their bikes - whenever I'm ill. I also have to cook when I can barely stand. Just not chicken soup though, otherwise I'll just hear: «Eww, how scary!».
... true love is caring for sick children. I used to think that true love was letting my husband shout at me in force 6 winds «now put to windward!». My husband thought true love was building me the Ikea wall unit without filing for divorce. Now we know that's all a pile of rubbish. True love is when my husband gets up three times in the night to make warm milk with honey. True love is not strangling him in return when he raves about his productive day and the great business lunch. I've been pottering around all day, cooking for sick children and home-cooked meals. Even so, our living room looks worse in the evening than it does in the morning. At least I've cleaned up the barfed up health food. Really productive.
... Schools are not places where knowledge is imparted. From autumn to spring, schools are clearly places where viruses are passed on. Somewhere, in a dimly lit cubbyhole down in the basement, a child-hating caretaker must be hiding. He mixes up first-class virus cocktails and sprays them in every classroom. Apart from that, I don't understand why our children go to school freshly recovered and immediately fall ill again. Every time. We parents only chat about what's going around: Strep throat in 3a. Flu in 1c. Any farm would be closed with so many illnesses in the barn, but school continues to run happily.
We've tried everything, but it's like with weight loss tips: Everything works a little bit, nothing really works.
... there is no way out. The cold season is like a tunnel with no emergency exit. We have to get through it. And we've tried everything, absolutely everything, to have fewer sick children: Globules. Kinesiology. Nasal irrigation. Moxen. Sage tea. Socks with cold oil from the Chrüter-Hüsli. Honestly. It's like weight loss tips: Everything works a little, but unfortunately nothing really works. I now know that Echinacea and Umckaloaba are not dances from Africa. But I would like to emigrate to Africa. At least there are no colds there.
Well, as long as we're still here, I'm going shopping for handkerchiefs as a precaution. All golden hamsters, come into our house - there will soon be piles of Kleenex in every corner for you to nest in!
Hoo-hoo. Damn, here we go ...
Picture: Fotolia.de
More on the topic...
- Incidentally, it's not bad karma when kindergarten children fall ill time and time again. How families can arm themselves against it.
- Going to the doctor isn't always the solution either, because there are new dangers lurking in the waiting room, as our columnist Michèle Binswanger knows.