Conrad came down with a painful chest cough Sunday morning that turned into a bad hacking cold by Monday. He hasn’t gone to school all week and depending on how much Tylenol I manage to get into him he bounces from industriously playing with Legos to bossing his brother to being so weak he can’t get off the couch—his illness peaks when I suggest he catch up on missed homework.

I was able to get him diagram some words to identify sounds: sh ship /sh/. But he kept saying it was too hard and that he is “the dumbest idiot” in his class because he is always the last one to finish his assignments and his teacher does not move on to the next lesson until everyone is finished. My heart broke imagining the panic he must feel thinking everyone is waiting for him and tried to figure out  how we could squirrel away the money to send him to private school.

At 2am I woke up with a raging fever and chest pains so sharp I thought I was having a mild heart attack.  I laid in my bed unable to get warm enough thinking I can’t believe I made him do homework when he was this sick. How come I don’t realize how sick my kids are until I get their cold myself?

Today, we both woke up still feverish and achy so changed tactics from trying to power through this cold to having a slumber party in the playroom. We made beds out of blankets and let Boomerang stay on all day. Conrad suggested I close my eyes (his words) and I fell asleep to Wilma scolding Fred for taking Pebbles to a boxing match. When I woke up he brought me a glass of water and asked if I’d like some coffee cake. We didn’t have any so he brought me a granola bar on a plate with a pretty napkin.

I felt uncomfortable with the role reversal at first.  When I was a kid I’d be doing my homework and my mom would be resting on her bed and ask me to go downstairs and get her a chocolate chip cookie and a glass of ice tea. I didn’t mind, but it set up a pattern of feeling like my best quality was being able to take care of her. I want my boys to be able to take care of themselves–not worry about me—at least not yet.

Yet when Conrad handed me the plate, he looked so grown up and confident that I was grateful for his help and relieved he was trying to figure out how to take care of me.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 3:41 pm and is filed under Random acts of mothering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.