Safe

 I have been incapacitated with glandular fever. Like a hot bitch slap at the end of a very long year this virus has taken my last reserves and I am done. 

I haven't felt this kind of fatigue since I was pregnant with Gray. The kind of fatigue where you make the bed, and then have to lie down on the bed to recover from making it. 

Fortunately I got very sick in the final week of teaching for the year so we're now into exam season so all I literally do everyday is mark exams and sleep. It has been interesting for me to note how dependent I am on routine and getting things done because even in the fog of illness I need to feel like I am accomplishing something in my day. I am not the kind of patient who can lie around watching TV all day. And I haven't, in fact watched any TV. That's possibly because my eyes feel like they're going to pop out of my head. 

But actually whining about my illness is not the purpose of this blog. Tonight is the first night where I haven't passed out by 7.30 with my children. Tonight I am lying in bed listening to a wet mist rap itself around our house. The frogs are subdued and the owls are singing their love songs to each other across the telephone poles. My children are both asleep on mattresses on the floor of our bedroom, wriggling and snorting and letting go of sharp little farts. Upstairs my mom lies asleep in her favourite spare room bed. She has come down and has nursed me, and fed me, and looked after my kids and done absolutely everything I would normally be doing. I have truly been allowed to do nothing but recover because of her. 

And I realise that one day I will read this blog and my babies won't be asleep next to me in their snug little beds, and my mom won't be sleeping in her soft nightie upstairs. I won't have a fridge full of her food and I won't have her tea in the morning. 

But for now, despite my sickness, I relish this heavenly moment where three generations are sleeping under one roof. Where all children are feeling warm and loved because their mom is near. Surely this is a foretaste of heaven?