Rory FitzgeraldIt is a tender moment when you are called to school to pick up a poorly child. The call came from reception, with tales of a pallid, weak boy, almost asleep with his head on his desk. It fell to me to ride to the rescue.
Driving to school, late autumn leaves clung to the trees, reminding me of wintry days long ago when some virus struck me as a boy in school. It could have been yesterday that I was
the small boy waiting quietly in a chair in the privileged hush of the receptionist’s office, while the other children were in class.
Then, like some ministering angel, my mother would appear to wrap me in hugs before taking me home to a quiet oasis of comfort and sympathy. There my buttered toast would be cut into soldiers – an important event that only occurred when a child was unwell. Toast cut into soldiers was believed to have curative properties in our house.
Another great privilege was the right to rest in my parent’s bed, from which I could watch television, using the ‘remote control’. This was a long bamboo stick with a rubber top, especially designed to punch the antique television’s buttons to change channels from RTĖ 1 to RTĖ 2.
It could thus scan the entire range of available channels in less than a second – an achievement which modern non-bamboo remote controls cannot yet match.
I drove a shivering Sean home, sitting in the front seat, a pasty-faced lord of all he surveyed. Once home, a warm fire was lit and pyjamas were broken out. Buttered toast was carefully cut into soldiers and it worked its old medicinal magic on a new generation. I like to think of it as a natural alternative to Calpol. Yet the real medicine is for the child to know and feel how deeply they are cared for. I remember as a child feeling something harmonious, even beautiful, about being nursed through such days of winter sickness
Sweetness
There is a sweetness in this for the parent, too: suddenly, their ever-bigger and bolder child regresses, and becomes, once again, a limp and helpless creature in your arms. All the usual domestic tussles over tidying up after themselves and getting their homework done are forgotten, a truce is declared and the child’s only job is to be cared for.
Their first innocence is thus returned to them. Our hearts melt to see them suffer, even if we know it will pass in a day or two.
They see how deeply we care, and learn again that in their times of need, their parents will drop everything for them.
They see – and feel – that they always come first for us. When it counts, work and all the rest of our daily chores come a distant second to their welfare.
Caring once again for my sick boy on a quiet autumn afternoon, I felt again the deep bond that was formed when he was a small baby in my arms, and I was a new father unable to believe the power of the new love swelling in my heart.