Where does it hurt? There, and there and there?

I have watched the Baby Signing time DVD with Cate, oh, say, a gazillion times. I know it all by heart. So much so that when I was asked by the nurse yesterday what brought me in to see the Doctor I wanted to put my two pointer fingers together, twist them and point to my throat. And then I wanted to do the same thing with my head, and then to every other part of my body. Instead I mumbled something about a ‘killer sore throat’ and then finally dramatically exclaimed, “ I feel like death!” A line, of course, borrowed from Mary Eliot Musgrove in Persuasion.( I love our fam’s fondness for inserting book and movie dialogue as it relates to life’s little occasions.) Only I really did mean it. And still do, ‘cept the antibiotic is kicking in and I feel only slightly less than death now. Which is starting to cheer me.

I’ve just spent the past 3 days moaning and miserably reflecting on how good I had it when I had health and didn’t notice. Conclusion: My ordinary, day-in-day-out life, without the bacterial crud, is pretty good and gracious and gentle to me.

From “The Riddle of the Ordinary” by Cynthia Ozick:

The ordinary by making itself so noticeable ... has got itself in a bad fix with us: we hardly ever notice it. The ordinary, simply by being so ordinary, tends to make us ignorant and neglectful; when something does not insist on being noticed, when we aren't grabbed by the collar or struck [on the side of] the skull by a presence or event, we take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.... And this is the deepest point concerning the ordinary; that is DOES deserve our gratitude ... the ordinary is above all what is expected. And what is expected is not often thought of as a gift.

No one enjoys a bad day or a bad cold, certainly not me, but sometimes it can serve to remind my take-for-granted heart, what a gift an ordinary, feel good day is.