I started writing another Lit Kid yesterday. In between holding the retching small frame, and the sick bowl, and the towel that got caught before the bowl was found.
I started writing about kids’ books, partly to keep my head when all I could think about was that everything we offered was being thrown back up again.
Writing can do that for you. Bring you onto thinking about something else. Which comes in handy when you have tried bottled water and boiled water and filtered water, and at least one of those with honey stirred in.
And still nothing is staying down.
I can write about it differently tonight. A dash off to the kids’ hospital last night, a new trick for giving rehydration drinks, and suddenly, we turn a corner.
Today, we’re onto stopwatches, keeping up the ‘small amounts very regularly’, and dotting about in between times. Hanging up washing, putting on yet more washing from the previous day’s experiences.
Today, I’m reading in the gaps too, partly to escape from Transformers on DVD, that Daddy found to cheer up the invalid. That stays on longer than regular TV time would suggest, because being in bed for the third day in a row gets tedious.
Finding a hundred ways to restart the topic of “time for the next dose of…”.
Tonight, a few bowls of chicken soup staying down, I’m breathing easier.
I’m hiding in the next room, still jumping up when I hear something that might be a call, and turns out to be a small person’s grunt while turning over, fully engaged with sleep.
Now I can come back to yesterday’s words. I began to write a new post about themes of illness in children’s books; discovered that rising panic meant I needed to stop writing and act.
Tonight, I need a breather from all that. To write about something else. Except, of course, that the writing tonight is also an opportunity to recover, from last night and the day or so before.
Sometimes, the writing is imparting something. Sometimes, it is sharing a point of view.
It could be a stiff drink, or a further attack on the chocolate supply. In one’s armoury of defences against fear, sometimes writing is just something else to put on.
And in doing so, I can feel safe to drop my guard again.
(Something Else is also a rather lovely children’s book, that will get its own attention, at some future point. There was also a picture book connection, you see.)