What Ails You?
My 7 year old told me tonight during dinner that she was glad to be back at school after missing a couple of days. We had been to the doctor with a fever and been sent home with antibiotics to help matters along. She said she felt as good as new and her friends were curious why she had missed school.
“I had a Yanus infection,” she told them.
Unfortunately I had just taken a drink of water to wash down my last bite of food, and I managed to project it almost the full length of the dining room. After choking for five minutes and ridding my lungs of the last few partially chewed bits of Lima bean which had been involuntarily sucked up the first time I heard the word ‘yanus,’ I glanced at my wife and she smiled and shrugged back at me.
“Yanus?” I said.
“Yes,” said the 7 year old, she was certain that was what she had been diagnosed with. I looked into her eyes and she wasn’t kidding either. Laughing at this stage would not be a good thing to do, so I was along for the ride.
While smirking at my wife and wiping the last amount of partially chewed food and drink off of the dining room table, I couldn’t help but fill up with love and smile from ear to ear. What a gift - what a blessing...
I am not sure what a yanus infection is, but it starts with a ‘Y’ and ends with an ‘anus’ so it must be horrible. Having an infected yanus must certainly be one of the worst things that can happen to a person. If you see someone frothing at the mouth, flailing about and grabbing their yanus it is undoubtedly a highly contagious, very serious, acute onset of Yanusititis Yeowchamongus. Don your gloves, goggles and Level 4 biohazard breathing apparatus, cover the victim in aluminum foil or a shower curtain and call 911.
When I was about 15, I remember my 7 year old sister telling me that she had a pain in her leg. The poor little thing loved her big brother so dearly and hung on my every word as I gently and confidently told her that her digestive tract was distended into her right femur and it had caused the food to aggregate into a small area where it was collecting and festering causing none other than the highly contagious, “sewage back-up.” Sorry, it was the best I could do - I was 15. But the beauty of the story was listening to my poor, gullible sis as she argued with mom and dad about how she was sure it was sewage back-up and that I had even described her symptoms exactly, and I was right and they were wrong. To this day if my sister has a pain in either of her legs I am sure she still thinks it could be sewage back-up. My parents have moved as far away as they can.
The innocence of children is so precious. It also makes for some very funny stories!
Getting back to my daughter and her 'Yanus' infection, I think the wonder of everything that happened was that tonight at dinner, while I was commiserating and whining about my day, my 7 year old managed to create a word out of thin air. And while it may have caused daddy to require the Heimlich maneuver, it also brought my head back into the ‘hear and now’ moment more than it had been all night. Sometimes it takes something seemingly small like that to bring life back into perspective - to shift the focus back where it belongs. Yes, I work to live, but I live for my family.
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, God. I am so very grateful...
