The Sowness of Sows, the Goodness of Things

Error Detected! Caution: Exit now, or next week, you will:

Nurse an iron head cold that falls upon you like an armor-clad elephant.
Your family will also catch said head colds.
Your children's eyes will crust over with viral conjunctivitis.
You will receive disappointing news.
Your 1-year old will fall down the stairs, belly-flop fully clothed into your shower, suck the coating off an ibuprofen from a childproof bottle.
Your husband will be insanely busy and thus absent.
You will wear pajamas all week.
You will fall hopelessly behind in all housework.

What would you like to do?
1. Run away
2. Endure the week
3. Hibernate (recommended)
4. Check yourself into institution

I choose-----number two! Big surprise!

And yet, even when weeks go as they do sometimes, and even when--every time I glance in the mirror I see an unkempt, messy face looking back at me--even when things are "not ideal," a week is better lived than not. Near the end of winter, hibernation often feels like it would have been a great idea. What better option than to curl up and cover yourself over with leaves like a perennial mulched and waiting for spring?

Tonight found me first singing harmony with Dora the Explorer's mailbox as I folded clothes with one hand and held runny baby Elspeth with the other. I managed to shout Spanish commands at a gate on the TV along with Merry who has resided in high state on the couch for the last week or so. Later I scooped up macaroni and cheese while singing Chicago's If You Leave Me Now. Merry held her milk glass in the air. "Cheers!" she said. "Cheers to getting out of the house tomorrow!" Elspeth, puffy red eyes and all, did her best to toast with her orange plastic sippy cup. So, no, it hasn't been a week of culture and sophistication. It has been a week of dirty tissues, sticky faces, and unpleasant snufflings and snorts during the night. But the week is almost over.

But hibernation? No. I wouldn't have missed the lovely occasional brightnessess in a week of homebound sickness. Strong coffee, for instance. Lots of strong coffee, which is now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, good for you. Hurrah! Like dark chocolate, another wonderful thing that is good for me!

Sickness equals good reading times with the girls. Merry is reading #95 of the Boxcar Children series, which is truly an abomination. Outfits are catalogued in great detail ("Violet was wearing a flour sack paired cunningly with an umbrella as a hat. . .), as are meal choices ("Benny ordered a grilled fishhead on rye with ketchup and fried rat tongue"). But it is nice to snuggle beside her in bed and read.

Elspeth has slept a great deal, and when she is awake she just wants to snuggle.

And I am inherently worthwhile, even in my pyjamas.

Reading Saint Francis and the Sow reminds me of this. I do not feel like a sow, though I do suckle Elspeth regularly. However, if Saint Francis found beauty and spirituality in a sow, I think my chances are pretty good overall.
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image from www.wikipedia.org
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Saint Francis and the Sow
Galway Kinnell

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessing of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and
blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of the sow.

--read and enjoyed from A Child's Anthology of Poetry, Edited by Elizabeth Hauge Sword, 1995