Today started of fairly normal. It's a holiday here, Martin Luther King to be exact. I woke up, had a mug of coffee whilst listened to some generic lo-fi. I woke my daughter up, exercised, helped her with homework, did little things here and there. I was a bit shocked when at 11:30, she announced that she was sick and demanded a bath. I offered to let her play on her little cocoon swing thingie and knew she was in earnest when she demurred. I texted my partner to let him know, and was surprised when he replied that he himself is sick.
I'm not sure what bug has plagued them, and how I so far have escaped it. I sometimes theorize that a mother's immune system resists sickness until it is safe to succumb to it. Because it seems universal that I hold on until she's ok.
This time, with everyone sick, the house feels odd. I am used to the chaos of my daughter and partner and often spend my days fussily cleaning the house after them, sending barbed remarks in Spanish when I lose my patience. But today, other than comforting my daughter when she calls, the house quiets. Sometimes, when I am alone, I sit and forget the passage of time, not realizing I was to turn on lights until the sun has been gone for hours. It is like that now. I'm sitting in a dark kitchen, only my laptop light shining on me. I think I felt compelled to write because I had to fill my space with some sort of articulation. I wonder how bad of a thing that is. Isn't there supposed to be a level of comfort one should feel in the face of boredom? I remember days that were so devoid of anything that seem now like both a forgotten skill and a luxury.
To fill that space of not working and the quiet of a napping family, I ran laundry, aggressively disenfected every surface I saw as suspect, and played Disco Elysium, cross legged on the couch with a pillow gently propping up my Steam Deck. It's a fascinating game by the way, in that one can maneuver the amnesiac protagonist in almost direction. So far I cannot forget myself in this playthrough. Instead of abandoning all inhibition to the wind and getting him drunk, high, and letting him be corrupt I balk at all lawlessness. I make him trade bottles and pick up piddly change just to have a roof over his head. I wonder if I can escape myself at some point and throw the rules to the wind, but I somehow doubt it.
The quiet I feel now is not disconcerting, though I do wish they get better. The world always feels askew when the people around me are ill and I feel more on edge, hoping that it doesn't get worse, or that she dehydrates. She is being quite demanding though! So she's not ill enough to not give me a bombastic side eye when I don't take her temp the way she likes or when the bathwater runs too cool. Even without chaos, there truly never is a dull moment here!