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Wed | June 29, 2005
illness
"Don't stand too close," said the mother to the child. "You don't want to catch Mommy's germs."
She rested from the effort it had taken to speak the words. They had tasted metallic as they passed the back of her throat. She had the sensation that while she spoke, or even breathed, her brain swelled and pushed against the inside of her skull.
The child sat on a spot on the bedroom floor and disassembled a toy-- a set of three dowels on which donut-shaped pieces of smaller and smaller size are stacked. It was a toy for infants, but the mother also knew it as a logic puzzle. The challenge was to transfer the stack of donuts from one dowel to the other in the fewest number of steps. Only one donut could be moved at a time, and a donut could never be stacked atop a smaller donut.
The child began to manipulate the pieces. The mother closed her eyes and focused her thoughts on her illness. She felt that by thinking about it, identifying its elements, and describing it to herself in greater and greater detail, she gained control over it. Every cell on her surface simmered with fever and sweat. She felt areas of her skin cool and then reheat as she shifted, exposing them to the air. She listened to the air. There was no fan and no draft; it was something like the air in the middle of the night. It undulated with her breath-- or perhaps her breath disrupted the ambience of the room. The sound of the room trembled beneath the sound of her breath. The sound of her child playing with the toy did not disturb it in the same way. It was so much louder as to be incomparable.
Time crawls slowly forward when one is sick, and she timed its passing like a musical conductor feeling the beat. She felt the beats pass until she knew its rate. Time was passing at a fifth its usual pace.
Finally she opened her eyes. The child had finished stacking the pieces and had looked up for approval, which the mother gave with a smile. Then, perceiving a form in her misty thoughts, her face acquired a devious expression.
"I like being sick," she whispered stealthily. The child showed no visible reaction. She continued, "I am so conscious of being alive. I feel every moment; a breath is an event. I am walking along the cliff of extinction and peering into the chasm below. There is nothing more exhilirating-- more refreshing-- than a virulent cold."
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