Being a parent is wonderful and rewarding.
It can also leave you wide open.
My son has had a high fever and a bad cough for about four days now.
He’s getting slightly better as time goes by, but every night is still a trial.
We had a panicky first morning when he woke and had trouble breathing. About 30 minutes in a steamy bathroom calmed everyone down. The most poignant, gut-wrenching moment as been his calling for me from bed and asking, “Dad, please make my fever go away.”
I feel tiny, insignificant, impotent, helpless. All I can do is hug him and give him his sippy cup of watered-down juice.
He’s just got a really bad cold or the flu or something. It’s obviously not deadly serious. Even with the specters of avian flu and antibiotic resistant bacteria, I live in a time and place that provides an arsenal of remedies to lessen his symptoms. I’m still employed, so I have an on-call nurse at the other end of the phone 24 hours a day.
I can’t imagine what I’d do if it were something truly serious.
I read the daily blog of a friend’s brother and his fight with leukemia. “Fight” sounds so active, almost comforting, but the real fight is on a microscopic level as severely outnumbered white blood cells try to stem multiple infections. All anyone can do is just stand by and hope.
I watch Hotel Rwanda and fight against the compulsion to identify with the families living under threat of being chopped with machetes.
I read reports of the Cambodian school siege. I see the picture of a father cradling the body of his son.
Pain and suffering are too common.
Some people say you haven’t lived until you’ve lived through catastrophe. My wife went on a religious retreat where she endured the blathering of a mother who insisted that she wouldn’t being her dead son back even if she could, because the experience has made her who she is today and it’s God’s plan and blah blah blah.
I call “bullshit” on these people.
I hug my son and feel very, very lucky.
Pakeha