Last night while laying in bed listening to the wind smack my windows and rattle the stove vent I recalled being a child, while my own children were sleeping soundly through it. I loved lightening storms and thunder, but wind scared me. This is probably due in part to the fact that when I was about 7 or 8 I was actually picked up off the ground by wind. That is a very helpless feeling. It might also be because of the movie The Wizard of Oz.
In any case I had all sorts of childish fears going through my head. The windows smashing in, our house being picked up, our house being torn apart and the babies being in the part that was ripped from our room and so on. And it brought to mind when I'd have nightmares as a child and going to my parent's room, being to afraid to wake them or the door would be locked. I would lay on the floor in front of their door, sometimes falling asleep, sometimes quietly whimpering or I was too cold and would eventually go back to bed. But It made me wonder if my parents ever tripped over me in the morning. None of my other siblings were ever at their door when I was, so I assume this was mine and mine alone. At this rate of imagination I was never going to be calm enough to sleep.
So when Zurich comes in our room and Gary groggily pulls him into bed with us I am still alert enough to notice that the little guy has a fever. I take him to his bed and grope for tylenol in the dark.
When this boy gets a fever, he gets it bad and he pukes. No fail. So shortly after administering Tylenol and trying to get him to eat a cracker he vomits. Then again after I had cast aside the affected sheets and pillows. Gary heard it and replaced bedding while I gave more Tylenol, changed jammies and soothed my little guy. Then I sat with him and waited in the dark, again listening to the torrential winds as I waited for his fever to go down. Finally at 2:45 I headed back to my bed to sleep.
How much will my children remember? Already how much do they remember? Gary often asks Olea things like if she remembers when she first visited Zurich, or the first time she went skiing or if she remembers the other places we used to live. For the most part she already doesn't.
In some ways it breaks my heart that they won't remember some things. In other ways I am grateful for a bit of a learning curve with kids. Since they won't remember a lot of the early stuff. Some days I just pray they don't remember my screw ups. If I could just learn how to stop making silly mistakes!
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