The doctor released me to go back to work today, so even though I still feel horrible, I'm obligated to go back to work. This despite a wracking cough from somewhere deep in my chest, sinus drainage that is resulting in runny bowel movements, and after staying in bed for five days straight, my body has very little strength. My job is very physical, and, not being the brightest or most compasionate guy, I doubt that my boss will take any of this into consideration when he hands me my assignment today. This will be, um, fun.
I don't usually get sick like this. A day, maybe two, that's it. From Friday night until now, with no clear end in sight. If I didn't need the money, I'd stay home today, too.
Somewhere during the night, in a literal fever dream, I tried to remember the lst time I'd been this low this long. And I remembered the Christmas season of '77.
December 17th was my brother John's birthday. As part of the festivities, he, my sister Ann and I all headed down to Des Moines to see Close Encounters Of The Third Kind,which had just opened that weekend. It was a wet, foggy day, not Christmas-like at all, not even all that cold, though the temperature started to drop as the day turned to night. I loved the movie, but I had zero energy afterwards, when John and Ann did some Christmas shopping. We ate at Wendy's, the first time I'd ever eaten there, and the food was absolutely dreadful. I could barely chew it. More accurately, I could barely move my mouth to chew it.
Leaving Des Moines, there was still some shopping to do, so we stopped at a department store in Perry on the way home. John and Ann went in; I stayed in the car, listening to top forty radio while I watched streetlights in the fog, Slip-Slidin' Away followed by Boogie Nights followed by Come Sail Away, and mercifully, they appeared, and we went home.
My brother's birthday was the day we officially put up the Christmas tree, always a favorite ritual, but I skipped it and went to my room, where I fell asleep early.
My first perception the next morning was that somewhere Abba was playing, and that my stomach felt like it was going to swallow itself. I ran downstairs to the bathroom and puked my guts out.
And that was it, I was out of school the next few days, the last week before Christmas break. I was in bed the whole time, too miserable to even read, listening to top forty radio. (I was twelve; I didn't know other options existed.) Heaven's just A Sin Away, Desiree, Turn To Stone, How Deep Is Your Love--an endless loop, the same things over and over, the only point of reality I had as I drifted in and out of consciousness, my only comfort as I floated so far out of my body I wondered vaguely if I'd ever return.
