A Thousand Teeth... the Distorted World of a Sickie

~I’m sick of following my dreams. I’m just going to ask them where they’re goin’, and hook up with them later.
Mitch Hedburg

~Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
William Dement


I’m sick with the flu. I really tried not to be. When my kids are sick, they come to me and call for me and breathe on me. I bring the pot or the water or the medicine and I’m the comforting one. Sometimes they need a hug. That’s my job, they need me to be the mom even more when they don’t feel good. There’s this flu thing going around. Stephen got it, Sarah got it, Danny’s starting to cough, and now I’ve got it. And I had to stop being the caregiver and disappear into a blanket with a headache. P.S. (can you have a postscript at the end of an opening paragraph?) I promise not to give the flu to you through the computer.

Everything gets distorted when I’m sick. The pain in my head feels like it should belong to a creature much bigger than me, in a head much larger. I get chills like a sea of cold, and the blanket feels too small to cover me, and yet I feel lost in it and unable to adjust it because my stomach is tying itself in knots, and waves of nausea are washing over me.

I try to think of anything but the pain in my head and the Thai food I wish I hadn’t eaten for lunch, because both of them threaten to overcome me in a giant pit of darkness and shooting pain and if I have to throw up I’ll have to move, which is unthinkable. I want to distract myself with something very normal. So I think of anything…a comb. And suddenly the comb has a thousand teeth and is vibrating in my head. Then everything in my head and body gets really warm and is larger than life and swells and engulfs me and the outside world fades and becomes unimportant.

I’m lying huddled on the couch, alternately freezing and feeling hot, and I’m vaguely aware, through the fog of my throbbing head, of voices I recognize in the kitchen far far away, but not what they are saying. It’s like in the old Charlie Brown specials when the teacher talks, except it’s muted in the distance. My husband is there, and Pat.

Jim comes to check on me. He feels my head, and his hand and voice are there but not the rest of him. He tells me I have a fever (why did that word not occur to me?) and I ask him to bring me some water and Tylenol in a voice that hurts and seems to be coming from someone else, not me. It’s around 7pm maybe, because that’s when he comes home usually. Danny was supposed to make dinner but I’m in no shape to help him and I certainly don’t want any food of any kind. Ordinarily it would be very important to make sure dinner got fixed, but that part of my life has gone away and thinking of food, including the silverware clinking sounds and the talk of macaroni, is a bad idea for me. I take the advice of the disembodied voice that I know is my husband and go curl up in bed. And dream.

Warning: Odd dream sequence ahead. Skip this paragraph if you like.

The dream is also big. I’m in my 20s at some kind of reunion or gathering of many people from many stages of my life, and they are all the same age. It’s a crowd. People come and go into a large building that’s like a church or an auditorium. I’m alternately carrying a bag of my things like it’s a trip, and losing it or looking for a locker. I’m in a dress, because it seems to be a fireside or concert, but we’re performing somewhere so we have to hurry. We switch buildings constantly. Then I lose my group, but I find a new one, and it’s all people I know. I forget where I’ve put my bag and I leave one area and realize I’ve left my shoes under my seat in the previous area and the building is like a college with many auditoriums and is so large I know I’ll never find the right building, not that I even know the names or care, so I’ll have to go barefoot. The faces are familiar but no one has a name in my head. I just know them. At one point I’m sitting with my high school crush, and I’m suddenly aware that…we’re engaged?? That seems very odd to me and in the back of my dream mind I wonder where his girlfriend is, the one he was always with in high school. I’m twenty and I don’t have a husband or kids, so this is not a problem. Just a bit out of place. Then he leaves to appear in a real estate commercial on a huge screen with people that seem to be his family, his parents and brothers and sisters, but they really aren’t, because although they are nameless, I know they don’t go with his face. Then I leave them there with the cameras and I’m trying to find something…my bus? And I end up with a bunch of girls and one of them is in her 20s now but she’s a teen again and she’s with girls who were in their teens when I went to high school and now they are in THEIR 20s and they know each other and that doesn’t seem strange to me. How come my dreams are always about getting lost? The funny thing is I’m never really concerned about BEING lost and time doesn’t really matter. At least in my dream I’m not sick.

Then I’m awake. There was much more to the dream I’m sure. But now it’s gone. My headache is gone but it’s 3:30am. And now I can’t sleep. So now that my head is clear again, I’m going to write my blog.

Hi.

Other than being sick, this week was satisfyingly routine. Sunday, still no calling and I subbed as the pianist in Primary since they still don’t have one. I took a carrot cake to Marriage and Family Relations class and everyone loved it. I can’t take credit for that, it’s Ramona Hartfield’s recipe. She brought it to Relief Society homemaking in 1992, and it’s just as good now. Well not the SAME literal cake. You know what I mean. Mutual night and book club night came and went. The point of our book club is not necessarily to read the book. We do talk about the book, but the point is to get out with just the girls and talk about our kids, our vacations, the economy, our jobs, and our lives, without the men around to take over the discussion and turn it into football or accounting talk. This time the discussion turned to things our mothers gave us when we were little and sick, that we now can’t eat without remembering being sick so we don’t. Ginger Ale and Jello were big. Ginger ale apparently is too sweet now and not the same as it used to be. We’re not sure if that’s because of high fructose corn syrup, or because they don’t use real ginger anymore. We debated making our own to find out. One lady’s mom used to sneak leftovers into the jello. Stuff like green peas. I would not want to eat green pea jello, sick OR well. No wonder she doesn’t like jello now.

I’ve been rereading one of my favorites, Wilie Collin’s “The Moonstone” for book club, and then I read a bunch of classic scary short stories. Stuff by E. Nesbit and Ambrose Bierce, and Doyle and Poe… about violet driverless cars that can only be seen by one person at a time, and a dead body walled into a basement with a live cat, and statues that come alive once a year and go on the rampage, and a room that whistles and can swallow you up, because a minstrel was killed there with his tongue cut out, and all he could do was whistle the same tune over and over, and his whistling cursed the room. They probably would have scared me had I read them at midnight. I read them in the daytime though, while waiting in the car line at Danny’s school each day. So they were just fascinating.

I talked to Mary about wedding stuff. I’m concerned with how much is unaccomplished, and the fact that we’re flying out right before and can’t haul stuff or do a lot of preparation in Idaho, and it will be the week before Christmas, but she says she has everything under control. This goes against my nature to have everything planned and figured out. I want to order bridesmaid outfits and paper goods and have them shipped but she doesn’t have the colors and styles entirely decided. So this is a worry, and even more of a worry because I feel helpless to do anything. I could take over and start buying dresses and shipping things and ordering invitations and cake toppers and plates and picking out photographers and music, but she wouldn’t like them and it’s her wedding. I hope she’ll be happy. Brittany and Christian are. I talk with Brittany occasionally while she’s walking to work, and she is busy and happy. It’s nice to know that. I wish the same happiness for Mary and Derek.

I don’t think we’ll put up our Christmas tree this year. Since we’ll be gone at Christmas there’s no point. I think we’ll put up the yard stuff and put some decorations in the house, but if you aren’t going to put presents under the tree why have one? What do you think…tree, or no tree?

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No recipe this week. My stomach won’t allow it. Instead, go online and find a recipe for ginger ale with real ginger in it. Send it to me when I’m better.