Kids are weird, and dads can be wimps when sick

I’m writing from a land of dripping noses and all-night coughs.

Two weeks ago, my wife was sick. I remember telling her I was invincible. Immune to whatever virus was going around. I told her I was in too good of shape to get sick. I eat my vegetables. I work out. I play full-court basketball twice a week, then go stand in the lake (if you’re not familiar with cold-water therapy, I highly recommend it).

But now, I’m sick, and so are my kids.

I’m sitting in the red leather chair in my office, a cup of green tea to my right, a copy of Peter Gent’s “North Dallas 40” to my left. I’m wearing noise-canceling headphones, but I can still hear my kids running wild above me.

Last night, my son coughed from midnight till sometime after 3 in the morning. My wife brought him into our bed, while I spent the night in his. He seems to be doing fine now.

Kids are weird when they’re sick. OK. They’re weird all the time, but they’re especially weird when they’re sick. When I’m sick, I’m a total wimp. I hide away with my tissue paper and let my wife bring me soup, or sometimes a toddy or two.

Kids, on the other hand, keep going, all the way up until they crash.

It’s like the drive to play runs so strong in children that they cannot, will not, stop. At least that’s how my kids do this sick thing. They run and run, despite their burning fevers. They play like a pack of wild monkeys, and then, as previously mentioned, they crash.

The crashes come fast and without notice. One minute, they’re fine. The next, the wheels have flown off and their little engines are smoking.

Of all the things people told me prior to having children, nobody ever mentioned sick kids. I was not warned that at least one full week out of every month would be surrendered to all-night cough-a-thons, the putrid stench of Vicks VapoRub singeing my nostrils as I try, in vain, to get my son or daughter back to sleep.

Luckily, my wife is a pediatric nurse practitioner. She knows things. Friends text her pictures of their kids’ funky rashes and hairline-fractured bones. When it comes to her own children, though, things aren’t so simple.

The line between “Mom” and “provider” is distinct. Yet, my wife must constantly straddle it. Like she’s doing now, tending to her sick kids and her sick husband after seeing 34 patients on Friday.

Yes, my wife is a beast.

And I’m still sick. Still stuck in the basement, wiping my nose as I type these words into a computer. In a little while, my kids will go down for naps. Or at least my son will. My daughter’s too old for naps now, even when she’s sick.

But I’m not.