Chicken Pox and The National Holiday

Today is Day 6 of the 2012 season of Chicken Pox, and is also Day 2 of what we call the National Holiday - the glorious time period between Mom's Birthday and Mother's Day.

A little chicken pox history . . . a thousand years ago, when I had only 5 kids, my oldest broke out with chicken pox hours after singing at a nursing home for Christmas with the home school co-op. Talk about guilt - I was pretty sure we were going to give it to some old person and they were going to die on Christmas day because of us. We spent that December being paranoid, staying home, checking for spots, and potty training the 2 and 3 year old, which was good, because we were then 3 lazy months away from having 4 in diapers.

Fast forward 3 years and some months, and child number five has a strange rash around her upper chest, front to back, on one side only. She is kind of an allergic child, eggs, poison ivy, and I don't really think about it, but a week and half later, we happen to be at a checkup for someone, and I happen to ask the doctor to take a look at it. He says, "If I didn't know better, I'd think that was shingles." A few days later, as I'm changing baby number eight's diaper, I see a telling little "dew drop on a rose petal" blister on her 7 week old thigh, and think, 'If I didn't know better, I'd think that was chicken pox.'

Next day, child number 7 absolutely has chicken pox, next day child number 6 also certainly has it. Number 5 did have shingles. The exclusively nursed new baby did have chicken pox (and has the scar to prove it).

Fast forward to about 3 weeks ago. Child number 7 has a strange looking rash around his upper chest, front to back, on the left side. It took me a couple days, but I figure out (as I'm already in the process of inviting over an old friend, whose children have chicken pox, in hopes they will give it to my 4 youngest) he has shingles. The friends come over anyway, and we have a sucker sharing pox party. Child number 9 wants nothing to do with it. He doesn't want what Seven has (doesn't understand he won't get shingles, just chicken pox) and won't come near the visitors. Oh well, we think, he'll get it eventually from the other three.

He was the first to pop out, no doubt from wrestling with Seven (shingles is contagious by contact, not airborne, like chicken pox - and you don't get shingles from shingles, you get chicken pox from shingles), not from the pox party. Okay, we think, if the pox party doesn't work, in 2 weeks the other three will have it from him.

Then on his 4th day, child number 10 gets one spot. Next day, she still has one, lonely, very classic looking spot. Next day, maybe 4 more small questionable spots. Today, on what should be Nine's last day (but not far enough into his case for her to have gotten it from him) Ten finally has a large number of spots, several with blisters, a convincing case of chicken pox.

The 1 year olds, meanwhile, have nary a spot or blister. Nothing. This is going to be the longest month since that December so many years ago.

The oldest 8 or 9 have activities to go to. I can't take contagious kids to those things. Dad can only take so many half days. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed.

Insert The National Holiday. Truth be told, I invented The National Holiday in hopes of getting at least one of my special days properly recognized, and an excuse to eat good food several days in a row. Having them close together means one of them is bound to be a dud. Either they'll do a great job with the birthday and forget Mother's Day, or they totally blow the birthday and feel guilty enough to acknowledge Mother's Day. But hypothetically at least something good will go down somewhere during that week or so.

It could be my expectations are just a tad high. I want sugar free Trader Joe's chocolate, flowers (good quality but cheap, a week prior to Mother's Day, yeah right), a cake, dinner with my girl friends one day, double date with close friends another, date with husband on a third, cards or notes or letters from at least a couple people who live in my house - that's all for the birthday. Then, for Mother's Day, I want an entire day off. I want to leave the house and not return until I have done absolutely everything I can think of to do (it won't take a whole day, believe me). I also want to have no responsibilities for the entire Mother's day, make no food, change no diapers, take a hot bath, and No Guilt. I want gratitude dripping off the walls. A thousand thank yous. And a parade.

At any rate, some kind of something that says, thanks, Mom, for cleaning up vomit, for cooking food, for grocery shopping, for home schooling till your voice is shot, for giving birth to and nursing lots of babies, for matching socks and stuffing and changing and rinsing out diapers, for not killing anyone or leaving anyone to be raised by wolves on the side of the mountain, for thinking your children are beautiful even when covered by chicken pox blisters and scabs. (I know it's weird, but I do.)