spots and stripes

For eighteen hours this weekend, we thought Lila had chicken pox. For eighteen hours, I felt such guilt that I had taken her to a children's toy store, where she touched everything and possibly exposed a dozen children and several pregnant women that I could not warn. For eighteen hours, I let her walk around without a shirt to stare at her torso, searching for raised red bumps that kept popping up. For eighteen hours, my mind was racing with WedMD questions and Google image searches for rashes. 

Chicken pox were no big deal when we were little. We all had them, including my poor little brother at five weeks old. It got you two weeks off school, lots of slurpees, pink Calamine dots all over your face and a free pass to watch The Little Mermaid five consecutive times in one day. But since all these crazy kids and their crazy vaccines, chicken pox is almost unheard of. My heart was racing about the discomfort, pain and confused sad cries I knew were coming. How do you explain normal childhood illness that helps your immune system to an itchy toddler?

And the working mom part of me was rethinking schedules, replanning trips, going through my mental rolodex of illness approved babysitters so I could sneak over to the office for an hour or two. All while feeling guilty that there was a part of me that was thinking about this illness as an inconvenience to the busy week ahead. 

 

Thank goodness Brian's parents were in town to watch her so we could break away to my dad's retirement day at his church of 20 years. Thank goodness the pediatrician's office has a "Chicken Pox Room" with a separate entrance and could see us on a Sunday. Thank goodness that Lila has inherited my family's penchant for unexplained, weird looking illnesses. No chicken pox, just a strange looking rash. And 18 hours of mind racing, heart pumping, baby chasing worries put to rest. 

A leopard does not change his spots, or change his feeling that spots are rather a credit. 

~~Ivy Compton-Burnett