Kathleen Molloy

I always say that Moms get sick after everyone else is healed; because moms have to take care of everyone else.

I have been proven wrong. My kids took care of me as a slept through H1N1.

During day three of my five day fever, I was splayed out on the chesterfield babbling incoherently. I had already sweated down a jean size and still felt as if I could boil soup in my ear drum.

I was a mess.  I let the kids completely pamper me with glasses of water at the ready. They got a kick out of playing doctor and junior doctor, and preparing cereal for Papa’s dinner.

“I’m sorry, Mommy, I don’t know what you want.” Kiddo #1 had brought me a straw because I couldn’t sit up to drink. I was completely incapacitated. Gasping for air I was trying not to hack on them. “Mommy, I don’t know what Farm Tax Credit is.”

“What are you talking about, honey?”

“Farm tax credit, Mommy, you keep saying it.”

Who knows what other bits I blurted out? Did I give away the hiding place for the stash of solstice gifts?

By day four I could get off the chesterfield but I had to be coaxed by parental emergencies.

“Mommy! Come!” I bolted off the chesterfield and crashed into the wall. I had been having problems breathing and this simple movement collapsed me. “Mommy! It was an accident.”

I hadn’t heard the glass crash to the floor. “Is everyone okay?”

“Nobody’s bleeding. It’s okay. It was an accident.”

I had enough energy to pick the kids up out of the glass and vacuum the kitchen twice before I collapsed again.

“Mommy! Don’t worry, nobody’s hurt,” Twenty minutes later Kiddo #1 reported “it was an accident.”

“Maman, my hair!” The baby wailed. I didn’t care who had accidently put the gum in the baby’s hair and I didn’t waste time looking for the peanut butter to slide it out. “Get me the scissors.” And back to the chesterfield.

It is now day seven. I can breathe. I can keep my eyes open to focus on reading the kids a story. Read a story – not fake reading a story. I had spent almost a week fake reading to the baby as little fingers flipped pages and I imagined what trouble Clifford the Big Red Dog would get into next. “A then Clifford said…”.

“Mommy, … Clifford no talk.” Egad! Found out by a two-year-old.

After one full week of letting H1N1 have its way with me, I am on the mend … and just in time …  the family has run out of clean underwear.

 As a functionally bilingual Canadian I am never surprised to see someone flip a cereal box to the side on which they will read the ingredients in their language of choice, and I smile knowingly as they turn a government form over front to back to do the same.

But I didn’t realize how conditioned I myself have become. Typically, I read the language that I see first, unless of course it is a financing agreement or instructions for medicine or some other such legal document that I need to make sure that I understand.

I read the first language I see – be it English or French. Then I ignore the second language.

I didn’t think I’ve missed too much by ignoring the second language.

Now I wonder.

I made a discomforting discovery about myself while visiting Saskatoon’s Mendel Art Gallery this week.

I was appreciating Mary Longman’s funny money exhibit, wandering around the hall, reading the block lettering stenciled onto the wall in bold black chunks, learning a little more about Mary and her Saskatchewan roots.

“Why are they calling this a New York show?” I asked my art-lovin’ companion.

“Because she works out of New York.”

“How do you know THAT?”

“Because I read it on the wall.”

“Where?”

We doubled back. “Right here, … on the wall.”

In my ignorance, I had been cruising the gallery reading only the left side of the blocks of information stenciled on the wall, completely ignoring the right side.

I grimaced. Had I done the same thing at the Rembrandt exhibit in Chicago 4 years ago? Have I been doing it in every art gallery, museum, or theatre outside of Ottawa??????

Now I’ll read all of the writing on the wall.