unHooked

I’ve been home sick – on and off – for a week now and although I no longer feel like each breath might be my last, I still have very limited access to anything like energy.  All extraneous movements are being closely monitored lest I should lack the strength to blow my nose. Again. I actually feel wasteful about the amount of Kleenex I’ve used this week.  Some time around day 4, and undoubtedly egged on by the Day-slash-NyQuil doping I’d succumbed to,  I reflected briefly on whether there’d actually be any practical mechanism for recycling used Kleenex.  It was a pretty short avenue of thought; they’re called hankies.

My Dad always had a hankie.  I never considered them as recycled Kleenex, though. It was just a part of him. He was about 6 feet tall, had beautiful salt and pepper turned snowy white in the end hair, was one of the smartest people I’ve ever known and he carried – and used – a hankie.  He blew his nose a lot and loudly. It wasn’t until I was 30 or so that it started to gross me out that instead of disposing of the excreted mucus in the trash, he’d sort of fold it up in the hankie and store it in his pocket. Right rear. It was always the right rear until the last couple months when reaching behind him became impossible. Then it was the right front.  His frozen left shoulder and gnarled left hand didn’t allow access to any pockets on that side.

My Dad was always the one who stayed with me when I was sick as a kid. As a grown up, I knew he wasn’t magic or anything.  Over time, I learned to camouflage my neediness by pretending it would make me feel better if I knew the exact biochemical causality of nausea or the mechanism that aspirin used to reduce inflammation or fever.  He knew those kinds of things and I wanted him to be proud of me for being able to keep up with him even if I was sick.  I think he was proud of me, but I’m not sure that was why.

None of this has anything to do with my decadent overuse of facial tissue, I just miss my Dad and I don’t feel good and I can’t think of anyone else who might find it interesting to contemplate the effect of laundry soap on the viscosity of snot.

Today I worked for about three hours and was exhausted (by showering) long before I reached my desk.  I stopped at Target on my way home to buy a vaporizer, having given several away to my grown children and having none left for myself.  It makes warm, eucalyptus-y steam and will turn itself off when it runs out of water.  My Dad approves, I’m sure of it, though he would have balked at the $40 price tag.  Unless he was buying it for me.  He would happily have McGyver’d for the hundredth time the one he’d had since college for himself, but anything less than the best for me would simply not have entered his mind.  And ya, he’d be proud of me.  Not for buying the Cadillac of vaporizers to accompany my mountain of used Kleenex, but for taking care of myself and for knowing that it’s important to take care of myself.  Also, maybe,  for retrieving several of his crisp white hankies from his dresser currently still residing in my garage and tucking them into the front pocket of my Badger sweatshirt.