You know how you never really want to say aloud that something hasn't come to pass because you might jinx it into happening after all? Well, here's my best shot:I have not been sick in like forever. Not a sniffle nor a sneeze. No itchy throat or aching head. No excuse to stay in bed all day drinking hot things while the rain pours down outside. No sweet indulgences in self pity. No one taking care of me and cooing over me and worrying me back into health. Nada.
It's been more than two years since I've had a sick day. Boo-hoo. I've always been in complete sympathy with C.S. Lewis's contention that "ideal happiness" comes very near on this terrestrial plane in a convalescence from a small illness whilst sitting comfortably with a good book. He chose a window overlooking the sea and Italian epics. I would choose a mountain cabin in the rain and something British-wrought. Our sentiments are essentially the same. Namely, I think, he and I are both looking for that absence of guilt that comes when one is recovering from illness (no matter how trifling), and the bliss of long periods of solitude, interrupted only by the most solicitous of inquiries.
And, unlike little Peggy Ann McKay, I am fully willing to succumb to a small cold any day of the week, even on a Saturday. So, I'm stockpiling Theraflu . . . and waiting . . .*
*To those of you to whom I might be rather closely related who think that the entire subject of this post is "inane," I only wish to point out that its premise is first cousin to the one which would lead a viewer of High Sierra (1941) to look longingly upon Humphrey Bogart's character's bullet-riddled arm and wistfully declare, "I wish I had a gunshot wound." So there.
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