Today I woke up after ten hours of deep sleep feeling refreshed. Despite a drippy nose and stuffed sinuses, the aches and fevers from the day before were gone. I went about my day more productively than the two before. As I proclaimed my feelings of change to Tom, he looked at me somewhat sadly. “What, aren’t you happy I’m better? You must have been so ashamed of me these last few days, as lazy as I have been.” He smiled, and said with a shrug, “It’s been nice!” “Nice, What!”

It got me to thinking, perhaps my mother was sick a time or two. Maybe those were the times when we were allowed to play outside all day, or perhaps the days when we had cereal for breakfast and macaroni and cheese for lunch. For dinner . . . “Ice cream? -Sure!”  Maybe it is good for us women to be slowed down once and a while by sickness, just so that we can remember what slow feels like- so that we can also realize how fast we typically take life.