I hope you stay sick, Mom

So, we go on our annual Spring Break trip to Cannon Beach for three days and stay at our usual Sandcastle Condos where we celebrate my sweet brown eyed youngest son’s sixth birthday. During our first two days, we swam in the pool, soaked in the Jacuzzi, ran on the beach, looked for sea anemones, flew Frisbees, boomerangs, kites, rode bicycles along the ocean waves, ate at Mo’s, watched old movies, savored crab and melted butter. Had amazing weather during the first two days.

Then the third day it rains, and I get sick (okay, so I timed it well). But, it was the stomach kind of sick. And, it was not fun. My just turned 6 year old also got sick but not as badly. I felt so miserable Friday and just wanted to erase the day and sleep it off, but then I could not sleep which made it even worse.

I had been sick with a different kind of illness a week before, and had canceled everything for two days, and so I thought I was immune to getting sick again so soon – though we did expose ourselves to my sister’s family before we left for the spring break beach trip, and they had all been sick. Yes, stomach flu.

I felt a little bit better upon returning from Cannon Beach, and continued resting on Sunday, hoping to start the week off freshly. And not sick. I was definitely still weak.

On Sunday night, while tucking my kindergartener into bed, I tell him that I hope I am totally over being sick as I just did not like feeling so badly.

His response?

“I hope you stay sick, Mom.”

I look at him with a question on my face as he chuckles a little.

“Why don’t you want me to feel better, Augustin?” I ask.

“When you’re sick, you stay home with me. And you don’t go to meetings.”
Man, I love the way children are so honest.

On Monday, he had his wish in a way. I had a fairly normal day, though not going 100 percent, definitely getting work done, but later in the day, I felt a bit weak. Perhaps I did too much.

Then I snapped off from my neck my small gold cross that my mom gave me when I was 16 years old and a new believer. It was in my bedroom which was still a disaster from returning from the beach, and truth be told, is far from organized even without having to unpack. I just had to find that gold cross.

I had the entire family helping me and I offered a prayer – and a reward. Five dollars. Then 10.

We cleaned under the bed – not a pretty picture—and we took everything off of dressers and cleared off the nightstands. Nothing.

When interest waned, I upped the ante to $ 15. That helped get the kids back to the room. My husband the engineer was trying to recreate the scene.
“Which direction were you facing when your necklace snapped?” he wondered again. I had first told him the wrong direction, and when I rethought about it, I showed him a different way I might have been looking while changing clothes.

“Okay, then the cross could have flown in the air that way,” he suggested looking toward the closet, while one of my 11 year twins dashes in the direction in which he is pointing.

“I found it, I found it,” Wesley exclaims as he runs toward me with the tiny gold cross.

It was on the carpet right next to four boxes of delayed decisions and laundry baskets piled up and pictures to be filed. I was extremely grateful to have my cross found, and I quickly gave my son the reward money.
Honestly, that cross is so small and my room so needing organizing that I really was beginning to wonder if we could find it, but I knew it had to be in the room.

Earlier, I had canceled going to a writing meeting I was looking forward to attending at church. I was feeling a bit of a relapse – and I lost my cross which I just had to find before going anywhere -- so, my youngest got his way: I stayed home.

But only partially because of me being sick.