Influenza

Les and Betsy's chicken soup

 Judy ached all over, and her prolonged coughing fits made her feel like she was drowning.  I could see the fear in her eyes. She even asked timidly if I would drive her to the doctor's. (I always go with her to the pulmonologist's, but never to her primary care doc's.  Sara and Judy worked together at the Old Town Clinic, and I don't hover over those appointments. ) A swab test confirmed that Judy had the flu. Sara made her lie still for quite a while in a darkened room until her heart rate slowed.  Then she considered whether to send Judy to the hospital.  "There's a 50- 50 chance you will end up there"  Sara said, but she ultimately decided that Judy was experienced enough to spot danger signals early.  She talked to me about ambulances and which hospital to head for.  She sent Judy out to the car in a wheelchair, and questioned me carefully about how far it would be from the car to the bed once we got home.
    Sara prescribed Tamiflu, an antiviral, for both of us. She described the cough medicine she prescribed as "the real deal," containing something to calm Judy and subdue the hacking.  It worked well; Judy spent the next two days sleeping. On the third day she sat for a few hours in her recliner, and then spent a little more time upright each day. She can't speak much without coughing, and doesn't have the attention span to watch movies. Short animal videos on Facebook make her smile. She mostly reads and pets Mutt Leigh. Today, the twelfth day since she came down with the flu, is the first time she has ventured out of the house.  Her ukulele/lunch buddies were thrilled to see her this morning.  Judy is a long way from her pre-flu strength, and we have to be on guard against pneumonia, but she is coming back. She has just today begun to give me some lip about the liquids I push.

Sally's portrait of Mutt Leigh

     Family and friends have been wonderful.   Frequent phone calls sustained me and reassured me.  I had a milder false of the flu, and I worried that if it got worse I wouldn't be able to take care of Judy.  Two minutes after I sent out an e-mail red alert to family, Tina called and offered to come from Chicago to help.  Betsy and Les made chicken soup with matzo balls and special powers, and drove out from the city to leave it on our doorstep.  Sally delivered a portrait of Mutt Leigh that captures her quirkiness and makes us laugh.  Midori called from Arizona to play a song for Judy on the flute.
    Thanks to all of you who have been holding us up in this hard time.

Hallelujah, Part 2

Happy

    Maxine and Simone and their parents came to stay with us after Christmas.  I was happily busy for weeks getting ready: shopping for toys and crafts and clothes from the resale store, making up princess beds, and collecting  lots of picture books.  On Sunday morning I waited eagerly for the sound of their voices in the driveway.  Courtney arrived with the girls after a week with her family in Los Angeles.  David came in later that day from Austin.

Courtney meets Mutt Leigh

Three nappers

     We had only a short time with Courtney; she left that evening for her flight back to Texas.  She and Judy caught up, we opened presents, and her friend Christopher came for dinner.     Meanwhile, Simone discovered the basket full of rhythm shakers and Maxine organized a rehearsal for the first of many shows.  "After I say bop bop you say bop bop,"  she directed.  Simone reminded me "Where's your instrument?"  Simone kept the beat and contributed her bop bops while Maxine sang and danced all over the kitchen.

At the playground

Quiet times

      Simone loves to sing.  She will do it for an audience, singing ABCD or Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.  She also sings to herself,  fa la la la la, or away in a manger . When she sees someone noticing her, she checks out the observers' face to see  whether she should perform or continue unselfconsciously. When Judy was a playing a video of her friend Holly singing, Simone scurried to put on her "pretty dress" (a ballerina outfit) so that she could dance and hum along with the music.
     On Monday we went to the local aquarium, where we were able to touch  sharks and manta rays.  Simone, age 2 and half, was impressed with the octopus: "Octopus turned into a rock," she reported to David's friend Mary Szybist, who presented us with broadsides of her poem about an octopus, The Lushness of It.

Texans in an Oregon cold snap

    We had saved the big box that our new washing machine came in, and that  become the girls' house.  We put a light and a mirror in it, and they stuffed the box with the two large shopping bags of  of  Christmas loot they'd brought from California. They played there for hours. Like true Americans, they had to make  auxiliary storage units for their stuff so that Maxine could sleep in the box one night.

Simone rings the dinner bell

Can I really touch a shark?

With Grandma Judy

      It was too cold to spend much time outdoors, but we did manage a short stint at a playground and a trip to the sock store.  Maxine chose purple  socks with guitars on them, and Simone chose red ones with sock monkeys.  I was surprised at David's choices of colorful striped socks.  He showed me the orange printed ones he was wearing.  Who could have guessed  that loud socks were the fashion among the avant-garde?
     Maxine planned a New Year's Eve party. She made a paper chain for the fireplace wall and turned plain brown lunch bags into elegant gift bags.  Our gift bags contained chocolate and Christmas crackers.  Daddy got a Christmas tie.  At our midnight (9 pm) we broke the crackers, put on our crowns, and banged pots and pans on the deck.  Simone was mesmerized by the music of Norwegian soprano Sissel singing Auld Lang Syne.
    At 3 AM the next morning David woke the girls.  Ever so gently and patiently he moved  them into the car and off to the airport.  I was filled with the lushness of it, but wish I had eight arms to draw them all back.

Another Silent Hallelujah, Part 1

Mary

Couldn't even hum along

   What is it about Handel's Messiah that renders me speechless?  A year and a half ago I was rehearsing for the church's Hallelujah Chorus when I came down with a case of  laryngitis that lasted for 6 weeks.  This fall, when the North Clackamas Community Chorus prepared to present a sing-your-own Messiah,  I got laryngitis again.  I sat silent in the audience, watching my friends Lois and Mary Jean working through  the alto part, and thrilling to the father and son standing behind me who sang every note.  I was not able to speak, much less sing.
     When our friend Mary had a holiday supper and sing-along, I could barely converse, much less join in the carols.  When Janet and Robert came over with Christmas cookies and the latest pre-natal grandchild report,  I couldn't ask all the obstetrical questions I wanted to.

Robert

     Judy by then had had a 4-week respite from conversation with me.  "Don't talk! Don't whisper!" she'd say, "You could damage your vocal chords." I have to be careful, in any case, when I talk to Judy. It takes her a few minutes now to regain her breath after walking from the car to her easy chair or walking from the bedroom to the kitchen. I wait to speak to her until she has enough breath to reply.
      Judy has new medicine to help suppress the cough that takes her breath away and makes her oxygen- saturation levels plummet. When I tell people that she has an (awful) new normal, she reminds me, "Always add that I hate it."

Merry Brucemas

      Lois and Chuck appeared with brunch on Christmas day.  They brought along their banjo and accordion and the words to Lois's Brucemas Carols, lyrics of traditional carols changed in honor of Lois's  first cat. ("We wish you a merry Brucemas" etc.)  Could I sing along?  Oh, no. But by Christmas  I could talk.

Chuck and Lois cook

     Lois, who is Jewish, pointed out that her people don't usually sing the Messiah.  "Neither do yours," she said. "It's a Protestant thing."  She's right. I used to think that only those who belonged to churches with handbell choirs and adult Sunday schools could master those notes.  Those people who, like the character in Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping," conceived of life as a road down which one traveled, an easy enough road through a broad country, and that one's destination was there from the very beginning, a measured distance away, standing in the ordinary light like some plain house where one went in and was greeted by respectable people and was shown to a room where everything one had ever lost or put aside was gathered together, waiting.” A far cry from Gregorian chant.
      When I wanted to sing the Messiah choruses from my easy enough road, I could not. But I was happy in this season, silently preparing for our granddaughters' visit.