Did Christmas happen this year? I missed it! I remember getting ready. We started our Advent fast forty days before Christmas. I sent out Christmas cards. We put up the Christmas tree after Thanksgiving. The kids weren’t into it, and it took a lot of cajoling and calendar syncing before the young adults could help me get the boxes in. Then no one wanted to stay long to decorate the tree. Wasn’t it yesterday that I manhandled the boxes myself and put the ornaments up high so that little hands couldn’t reach them? I loved decorating the tree myself. For a good many years it became a family affair with a twelve-foot tree, friends, Wassel and music. It was a whole thing. Now our new tree for this new house is eight feet tall and one of these days I’ll need something four or five feet that I can set up myself once again.
I accidentally scheduled a music party on the first day of Christmas services. It was the only day all three music groups could gather together after Esther, John Ben and Misha arrived. We ate a vegan potluck with my contribution being a layered affair with saffron rice, hummus, roasted eggplant and zucchini. Mike and the kids give a thumbs down to eggplant, my favorite roasted vegetable, so I loved the occasion to make it. My guitar trio Joyful Noise played “Away in a Manger” and my cello duo Grand Cello Grannies played, “Joy to the World.” Then my ukulele duo, Justin and I, played “We Three Kings.” He’s thirteen and isn’t into fun band names. I invited everyone I could like Christa, Kelly and the gang, and Emily and Ethan and Veronica to come sing in the peanut gallery. Learning three instruments was a bit too much for me, but my partners all made me look good and the singers never faltered. Esther, John Ben, Jonah, Xenia and I led a few more songs singing in parts. Esther and John Ben stayed the course, but Xenia, Jonah and Justin only showed up for their particular songs and hid in their rooms. I felt bad that my family didn’t enjoy the party as much as I did, and it made me give extra thought about hosting the annual ballroom dance after Christmas.
Basil had his wisdom teeth out the day before the big sing-along, so I didn’t give him much thought beyond missing his singing voice. When I did check on him he was feverish. His incisions were healing well, and he wasn’t in pain. I told him to keep on taking the antibiotics they had prescribed for possible infection. The day after the party Jonah became feverish. He had been sleeping non-stop since he got out of school, and he slept through the flu. I have yet to see him awake, but he claims he grew another inch. Anyway, it took me till Sunday when the boys both had high fevers and were throwing up to give in to the idea that they might have the flu. I had been sick with a fever-vertigo thing the previous weekend, but I thought it was a reaction to the shingles vaccine. Now I think I may have been the first to get sick.
Justin and Xenia escaped with a low-grade fever and malaise, but Xenia missed a number of her extra gymnastics classes to prepare her for her first competition in January. Mike was also a minor casualty as was Coryn. Misha came to us with a runny nose from day one but he had multiple days of fever and glassy eyes. Esther had aches and congestion and ended up in the ER one night for horrible back pain. Misha spent the night in my bed, and I’ve got to tell you that he preferred to sleep sideways with his head against me and feet against Mike. We needed to make sure Esther wasn’t going into preterm labor, and thankfully she was diagnosed with pulled muscles. Then John Ben and Esther had to fight to convince them to give her, a woman in her third trimester of pregnancy, something to help with the pain. That took all night long.
Sophia started with the high fever right before December 25. I was excited about getting ahead of it that time and tested her for flu and Covid. That’s how I know we had Influenza A going through the house. We got her on Tamiflu which has worked for me in the past to shorten the flu. However, she had a bad reaction to it, and her nausea was so out of control that she ended up in the ER. She had a personal goal of ending the year at 130 pounds but is currently down to 117. She didn’t have seven pounds to lose.
Basil’s trip to the ER happened next. I felt relief since I was looking for things to come in threes. Just as he recovered from his other symptoms, his body broke out in spots from head to toe. We were too late for urgent care so to the ER we went where they confirmed what I suspected. Basil was having an allergic reaction to the antibiotics. That’s two classes of antibiotics off his list. I told him that he can’t have any more infections and to just say no when offered preventative measures before minor surgery. They confirmed Influenza A, gave him his first dose of steroids, called in a prescription for a four day course, and sent him home.
Oh yeah and here’s a funny thing. They called him Antony when they called us to the back. I tried to correct them since that’s his middle name and not his first name, but obviously that didn’t help. Though the paperwork we took home said Basil, the prescription they called in was under Antony. That took a miracle and a lot of harassment on my part in person to get straightened out.
Then I had to roll my eyes when the pharmacist said, “I found his prescription under Antony, but Antony isn’t covered by your insurance.” Thankfully it was easy for him to combine the accounts.
John Ben fell sick next and I had a relapse or something else. This time I had a low-grade fever and all the respiratory stuff and I’m tired. Either I’m blowing my nose non-stop or my throat is itchy and sore. I’d rather blow my nose, but my body is doing as it will.
Somewhere in there we met, like in Covid times, in small groups six feet apart, to open presents for one another. We were still trying to keep people from getting each other sick and some people weren’t able to get out of bed at all. There was no sitting in a big circle near the Christmas tree in a big unwrapping event. There were still presents under the tree the next day, which slowly disappeared. I can only hope that everyone got everything they were supposed to. I made myself a Christmas dinner with ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, and olives. It was a buffet style affair that was left out for a couple of hours for people to eat as they felt they could. Our Christmas Crepes happened on New Year’s Day and was utterly exhausting.
No church services for weeks. No big dinner parties. No waltzing party. That was a sad one to cancel. No extended family gatherings. No big birthday party for Justin. I’m glad he opted to have a few friends over to an escape room before school let out. His huge sheet cake from Costco is still in the refrigerator. Empty, unfilled stockings are hung up in front of the fireplace, and the tree is lit in the corner. Christmas must have come and gone when I wasn’t looking. It’s time to put all the decorations away.
Misha has found the button that changes the lights and the tree looks different throughout the day. He left the ornaments alone for weeks, but yesterday he pulled a few down, put them in a laundry basket and dragged them across the house to the laundry room. He adds a layer of chaos to the house by pushing laundry baskets with clean clothes, dirty clothes or random collections of toys. He also loves to switch the clean and dirty signs on the dishwashers. The house is messy. All the kids I talk to blame Misha for their inability to find clean clothes or put their dishes in the dishwasher, but I suspect they could do more if they tried.
I spent last night caring for Xenia who had a temperature of 100 degrees and a sore throat and cancelled her birthday party with friends. Is it more of the same or something new? Surely there must have been multiple viruses around the house all these weeks. I’m ready for school to start to send the kids away from the petri dish our house has become.
The one thing I’m thankful for is that these past few weeks have given me more mothering time with my kids than I’ve had in years. The kids are so big, but every so often they need a mommy to hold them when they are sick or keep them company when they can’t sleep. Sometimes it feels like those times are far away, but perhaps they are closer than I thought.
We’ve had the warmest winter ever with not even a night of freezing temperatures. We need some days of snow to kill the bugs, but I long for buds on trees and summer breeze and maybe a sea shanty sing along when Esther, Jon Ben, Misha and his baby sister come next summer. I’m getting a banjo for my birthday and can hardly wait to start playing. I already have a trio of music books with music for ukulele, guitar, banjo, and mandolin. What’s a mandolin anyway?
I hope that you had a merry Christmas. I hope we both have a Happy New Year! Christ is born! Glorify Him!
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