On the Value of Convalescence

Convalescence isn't something I've done much of. Like most adults, I deny that I'm sick until I can't, and then as soon as acute illness is over, I'm back at it. This time, though, I'm being forced to convalesce. The fevers are gone, and my head is clear again, but when I stand up I get dizzy and need to sit down, and I have a hard time at night, which only leaves me more exhausted than I already am. I think a piece of it might be short-term anemia, which is apparently a side effect for adults with Fifth Disease, and then of course there are the aching joints which come and go.

And I have no appetite, except that Friday I suddenly had a yen for rice pudding which S made for me yesterday, so that's what I've been eating, and suddenly I see why Madhur Jaffrey, in Climbing the Mango Trees, which I also read while sick, and which is absolutely wonderful, especially if you are at all interested in India or food, which I very much am, at any rate, in a high school domestic science class in Delhi ca. WWII, she complains about having to make English food for sick people, like blancmange, and while generally my sickbed yearnings are for Asian soup with noodles, right about now a nice white quivery blancmange sounds just about right.

At any rate, the children are no longer freaked out by my being sick, as I can sit up and engage with them, rather than lying back with my eyes closed, and I no longer feel the need to lie back with my eyes closed, but can sit up and engage and resume my usual directing of the household, albeit from the couch or bed, so it's really not so bad, this convalescence, especially since I have rice pudding.

Hopefully, though, it won't last too long.

Edited to add: Of course the context for this post, I realized, just after I hit Publish, is all of nineteenth-century fiction, and especially Little Women, the Katherine Hepburn version of which we are STILL watching, though I am determined to finish it off this evening, even if that means Beth must die, because it is overdue, and we've done multiple viewings of multiple portions of it, and this is just getting ridiculous.