First day of school-first grade
When I was a first or second grader, Mother put me to bed one evening and said, “You probably won’t be able to go to school tomorrow.” At that age, I still really wanted to go to school, and I was not happy at all with this news. It was something about pink eye.
I don’t know if my eyes looked red, or if there was pink eye going around, but for some reason, she expected me to have red, crusty eyes the next day. Sure enough, when I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t open my eyes. They were glued shut with eye gunk. However, I was determined to look healthy and normal, so I could go to school, so I strained and worked and, with great determination, got my eyes open. Now, as a six- or seven-year-old, I didn’t really always think through all the steps of things, so, when Mother came to wake me up, I smiled brightly and said, “See. My eyes are fine.”
Of course they weren’t fine. All that eye gunk that had pasted my eyelids shut was still clinging to my eyelashes. No school for you, little girl.
I don’t remember anything else about the illness (except, given our history of illnesses, I suspect that my sister had had a very light, hardly discernable case of it, and then I had a case at the zenith of pink eye history). I don’t know if I missed several days of school, or just one. I don’t remember if I went to the doctor. I just remember how easily Mother knew that my eyes had been stuck shut, and therefore, I couldn’t go to school.
Anyway, I thought about that a couple of weeks ago (and in the ensuing several days) when I had an itchy, goopy eye. I went to the ophthalmologist and got a diagnosis of a viral eye infection (as opposed to bacterial, much worse, much more contagious, and much longer lasting). I got drops that I used four times a day, and I pried my eyes open each morning for more than a week. No antibiotics for viral illnesses.
I worried that I was contagious, thinking mostly about the time I spend with children on Sundays at church and Tuesdays at the elementary school. So I asked the doctor, “Is it contagious?” He looked at me with the tiniest bit of impatience, and said, “Well, you got it.” Oh, yeah.
“Can I be with little kids,” I asked. “Yes, just be careful.” He is a big fan of hand sanitizer, so I went and bought a container of that (alcohol-based) and a small container of non-alcohol based (for the kids), ready to take to church. But, by Saturday afternoon, my other eye began to be itchy and red and gunky, so I stayed home from church that first Sunday. By Tuesday, things were much improved, so I went to Reading Club, where one girl said, “Your eyes are real red.” “I have an eye infection,” I said, but I didn’t describe how I had had to pry open my eyelids that morning and scrub my eyelashes clean with wet cotton balls. “I have some medicine for it.”
I’ve gone through almost two whole bags of cotton balls, and lots and lots of eye drops.
By last Sunday, I felt healthy enough to go to church (only one eye just a little bit hard to open), where I washed and washed my hands and pumped and pumped the hand sanitizer.
Meanwhile, I thought, as I often do when I’m ill, about medical treatment in my mother’s time (pre-Depression and Depression era), and earlier, when people died of things that are effectively treated now. Or, they had prolonged illnesses, when now, some over-the-counter medications ease symptoms and improve recovery times. I feel really fortunate.
I had mumps and measles when I was growing up. But my children didn’t. I had chicken pox, as both boys did. Peter won’t. Maybe during Peter’s adulthood, people will stop dying from cancer. Let’s hope so.
You are the God of miracles and wonders! You still demonstrate your awesome power.
Psalm 77:14 (The Living Bible)
Eleven-year-old me, with the mumps
In the beginning, all the knowledge and raw materials we needed were present, created by God for us. It’s just taken us a long time to unlock some of the miracles and wonders. And there are more miracles and wonders still to be discovered, unearthed, understood, and made practical and useful for us.
It’s hard to imagine what wonderful wonders, what discovered discoveries, what miraculous miracles are waiting, just around the corner.
They’ll be awesome!