The lurgy: an essay.

Tis the season, as they say:

1. I got it.
2. The historian got it.
3. College daughter got it (actually, she might have had it first).
4. Scotland daughter got it. (She sent an e-mail to me, saying, "I think I caught the lurgy talking to you yesterday.")
5. Her husband got it (actually, he might have had it first).
6. Now, little Evie in Scotland has it, so much that she's had to go to the hospital.

At a meeting tonight of a board I'm on, a friend commented that he'd had some variety of the flu a couple of weeks back. "I'm about ninety percent," he said, then added, "of course, that assumes that I was one hundred percent before."

Exactly.

The body is reliable, until it's not. I think of myself as a sturdy person ("yes, you're a big healthy girl," as the historian once said, with great affection), rarely sick enough to have an actual sick day, but I've certainly had more than my share of underachieving days in the last few weeks, days where I roused myself to do what was necessary--teach, tutor in the Writing Center--but came home to have pressing naps that lasted for hours. I don't think my body's letting me down, exactly--just that I feel more vulnerable to whatever's out there. And I don't like thinking at all of the vulnerabilities of little ones, their fevers and vomiting and how easily they get so very sick, how carefully we have to watch out for them.

Good days--the ninety percent days--are to be cherished. Maybe even eighty percent days, or seventy-five percent days. The hundred percent days--and maybe what counts as a hundred percent day changes, depending on the part of your life you're in--those are like finding a four-leaf clover or a quarter on the sidewalk, or seeing a hawk circling over a field, or getting a letter from an old friend you've not heard from in forever. Lucky.