This morning I’m on the mend. My voice is still creaky and my cough fierce but I feel better. Last night I slept longer before the coughing woke me and was able to get back to sleep instead of having to come downstairs at some ungodly hour to watch garbage TV. Staying home cozy and warm and taking naps have been the best cure for this.

When I was a kid, I seldom was sick enough to stay home from school. My mother set the bar pretty high. Sniffles weren’t enough. Coughing might have done it, but the degree of coughing was the key. Once I had the measles so I had to stay home, but that was no fun because the room was kept dark, and I wasn’t allowed to read. I just stayed in bed all day and was totally bored. What a waste of staying home! I know I had mumps and German measles but I don’t remember when. I also had chicken pox, and I remember taking baking soda baths so I wouldn’t itch as much. My mother would scream if we dared scratch our faces. We were warned about the gross, ugly scars we’d have if we scratched.

Few kids were ever absent from school. One girl had surgery in the fifth grade, and it was such a singular event I still remember. Her name was Catherine. I don’t remember why she had surgery, but the nuns were really nice to her when she came back.

During high school you never wanted to miss a day. Two broken legs would mean dragging yourself to school because missing even one day meant missing tons of work which had to be made up. I used to argue with my mother that I wasn’t sick when she’d insist I needed to stay home. I did get sent home from high school once. I had the German measles which was going around. We went to school every day on the public bus so that’s how I went home, probably spreading German measles to the world. My mother didn’t drive then so the bus was it. I couldn’t stay in school. I remember it was a Friday. The reason I remember is there was a dance that night at the school, and I was stuck home. It made being sick even more miserable.