Longer Than You Thought

The days have passed, opened, closed, opened, closed, slanted gray, mostly, morning’s frost clinging on with precious little sun to burn it away. Coughing in the night. Hot water steaming from the bath tap, filling a soaking tub, yet again. Oblong pills placed in your hand, with a glass of cold water to wash them down, handed through the darkness from a son who’s come home for the holidays, who knows what this sickness feels like. Strange sleep, then. But never quite enough before tossing, turning, waking, aching.

By day, you bump along, working as best you can, nodding in agreement when the general contractor’s voice comes over the phone, “Yeah, you don’t sound so good.” By conversation’s end, your voice definitely isn’t sounding good (or hardly sounding at all). By afternoon, when you shuffle into the cabinet maker’s shop across town, he takes one look and wheels a chair over to catch you, saying simply, “You look sick.” (When you’ve been friends for years, you tell it like it is.)

And that’s the truth of it. It’s been a week.

Three days is sufficient, I wag my finger at this illness and say. Definitely no more than four for a run-of-the-mill winter sickness to come and go; an entire week is laughably inappropriate for a simple cold. There’s only so much tea one can drink, so many baths one can take, so many vitamins one can swallow, after all. I yammer on, but all I get is a perturbed sniff in reply. It will do what it will do and I’m left to watch the new year flip by while hovering in the infirmary.

I let out a deep harrumph.

But then, this morning, these words: It’s okay if it takes a little longer than you thought.

Well, hmm.

Deep breath.

Okay, then.

A little longer than you thought.

It’s okay.

Here’s hoping, loves, that the new year has found you all in good health and diving in with gusto. I’ll be along soon (I hope).