Runny Noses
For us parents, winter weather comes with a sniffle, cough, fever, and/or flu. It seems that children get sick more at the onset of winter, the transition from one season to another, than during the depths of winter cold later on. Perhaps there is a shock to the system from the changes in temperature, perhaps there are days when we dressed them less warmly than the day required.
Of course, there are the constant rounds of viruses that are passed from child to child in day care, which seem to continue right through till summer. Sometimes it seems that the only time all of my children are not sick is during the summer vacation when school is out - and even then, that is a stroke of luck.
Despite the pain that my children endure when they are sick, and the stress and worry I experience during those long days, my children's illnesses have proven to be periods of awakening for me as their father and as a human being.
I am stripped down to my most basic role as a caregiver, and I am reminded of my most basic wish: that my children should not suffer, and that they should live in safety and health.
The Experience Of Illness
Few experiences give us insight into the most basic realities of life than illness - our own, and of those we love most dearly. When I am sick with a cold or flu, I am forced to stop and let life be. I have to let my body be, give it the time to heal itself, and to cease from my everyday activities which use up energy now needed for healing. It is not so much of a choice as a necessity - I simply can't perform my tasks; even holding enough concentration to read a few pages from a book is usually too taxing.
At some point, hopefully within a few days, the fog of illness begins to lift and life is seen for a few moments as a new beginning. To get up and stretch, to walk outside, to enjoy a cup of tea, to be able to breath freely and smell a flower or taste an orange - these are all miraculous abilities, returned to me as if by divine gift.
But the mind soon slips back to its habitual way of ignoring most of these moment by moment impressions, and I don't notice but the strongest of sensations. My appreciation of the basic fact of being alive in this wondrous body, which has healed itself and returned me to the fullness of life as if from a numbing dreamless slumber, evaporates within short hours of my recovery.
The gift of health is squandered in my desire to get on with my day and life; I return to wanting to get things done, rather than be in my moment.
Illness As An Opportunity
Illness is an opportunity for generating an appreciation of the gift of life and health. Though I usually revert back to my old taking-my-life-for-granted state of mind, the illness of my children rings a bell in my consciousness which echoes long after their health returns, and still can be heard as I now write.
After almost forty years of seasonal illness and health, I know what to expect when my throat becomes raw and my head begins to ache. When my young children flare up in fever and wracking night time coughs, I am thrown in to a moment-by-moment existence.
My childrens' illnesses thrust me into a beginner's mind where I don't know what to expect, and my sole purpose in life is to facilitate their healing. Everything else is peripheral. A child's sickness, as a friend put it, always comes at an inconvenient time; this is true if we are still holding onto our daily lives.
Just as when we are sick, the most central thing is our health, even more so when our child is sick, life is concentrated on one purpose: that they should be healthy. It is an amazing focusing of all of our energies and concerns into one place and moment - our children and their well-being. For me, when one of my children is sick, I feel lik a servant to a young monarch.
When The children get well, hopefully within no more than a few days, and our roles shift back to their former positions, what can remain is an awareness of the fragility of life, and of its preciousness. Sickness is a knock on the door of that awareness. We get sick and healthy again, we open the door and close it, open and close. The children in our care knock on the door of our souls with the pain of a little body and mind.
Our Children's Illnesses As A Means To Discover Compassion
We as parents want to prevent them from experiencing such pain, and know that we never will be able to. Sickness is unavoidable, and usually an ordinary part of the passage of the year. What is extraordinary is the opportunity that such illness, in our children more so than in ourselves, affords us.
The pain and concern we feel in relation to their illness is greater than we can feel for anyone else, and that feeling is the awakening of compassion. When we are sick, we want to get well, and we relate primarily to our own pain and suffering.
When our children are sick, we relate most intimately to the pain of another. We relate and we act: we serve them, and make a vigil for their health.
As a true awakening, it no longer remains just the desire for their health, but a sensitivity to the suffering of all others who are sick. Just as our children should not suffer, so should no one's child suffer. And adults, of course, are just grown-up children who, too, should be well and healthy. Our children's illnesses can awaken us to the most essential role we have with the world of others: we desire and work for their well-being.
All people should be free of suffering and live in health; in our individual ways we work for that end, beginning with our own children.