Lessons from a cold...

Struggling with a cold for a few days has brought me closer to a few truths. The first one being that I do not like being laid up and dependent on someone’s kindness to get on. The other is that I actually can expect the kids to take care of themselves for hours together and even try to help their mom out. The third is that I do nothing to get myself closer to my dream of writing and it weighs on me a little more each day.
Some people are born nurses in the sense that if someone is unwell they can, almost magically feel their loved one’s discomfort and alleviate it or even anticipate needs. I am a good, albeit reluctant nurse myself. My husband does care but has no idea about what to do when I am ill and can only at most follow instructions inadequately though in a normal situation he is the epitome of efficiency. My mother thinks boiling water for soup is too difficult half the time so she is nurturing only when her son is ill and thinks daughters are made of hardier stuff. So I end up dragging myself to the kitchen to make soup which everyone else loves to drink but no one thinks to make for the cold-infected patient.
The pleasant feeling one gets when one realises that indeed the children are not as dependent as they were a while ago is hard to explain. They get by with minimum supervision and actually worry over why I’m in bed and even think to bring in biscuits to make me feel better. I cannot recall when the little ones changed from needing constant care to achieving a measure of independence that really makes sickness a lot less scary than it used to be.
My inertia in following my dream fills me with anxiety that attacks when I am not actively doing something or in the dead of the night. So being unable to read or go online was the perfect circumstance for my ever-present-in-the-background anxiety to kick in. The years I spent dodging this fear would have seen me as an established writer had I actually taken the trouble to face things head-on. But I continue to slither sideways like some exotic desert snake waiting for a more perfect time or place or situation before plunging in. What sort of a spineless coward does that make me, I wonder?