bedtime

I wrapped up in the bed I cobbled together after my son vomited on all my bedding, punctuating his first day back to school with some newfangled virus.

Such is February it seems.

So began the washing and the weariness that comes when the kids are sick, and my husband is fast asleep, working out of town, collecting a paycheck and messages from me, his beleaguered wife, needing to say aloud that I miss him - leaving a message on his cellphone to say I am too tired, this one night, to parent without him by my side.

I crept into Zack's room, draped in trash bags and towels, watching him wrestle to sleep, before turning back to my big family bed, where we weather out the last weeks of winter, petting heads and taking temperatures and waiting for spring.