Don't jinx it

All winter long, I was quietly thinking about how smoothly things had been going even amid our family's very busy life. And then everything caught up to us at once.

I’m probably the only one who noticed, but this was the first week since launching this site that there wasn’t a midweek post.

Though one of the many reasons I love writing here is that I am not beholden to a calendar, my senses of enjoyment and accountability led me to settle into a consistent pattern for the first three months: One post around the middle of each week (usually on Thursday) and another on Sunday.

It was possible first and foremost because writing is a joy — more, even, than just a labor of love. But it was also possible because as complicated and packed as our family’s weeks are, there were precious few deviations from the script. It required organization, but I always knew I could find the time to write and almost always had the energy to match.

Along the way, I would perhaps too often think to myself about the relative ease of the winter and how much of a role it was playing in our family functioning at a level that let us keep our heads above water.

Remembering the non-stop barrage of snow and cold a winter ago, my fellow Minnesotans and I almost (almost) felt guilty walking around in hoodies and shorts for many days in January and February. We would talk nervously about how nice it was outside — perhaps a mix of waiting for the other shoe to drop and distant fear of the impact of climate change.

A few weeks ago while picking up my first-grader from school, a more harried parent asked if we had been hit by the latest viruses making the rounds.

“No,” I said in a hushed tone. “We’ve been lucky.”

Our fourth-grader had strep in late October, and after that it had been smooth sailing for nearly five months. We have three children in three different classrooms. We were defying the odds, and I knew it.

I wanted to stop thinking about it while still appreciating it. I also wanted to believe that we must be doing something special to keep all our kids healthy, even if the mild and dry winter certainly helped.

Sports fandom made me superstitious at a young age.

Don’t jinx it.

And then everything caught up with us at once.

It started a little over a week ago, last Thursday. My wife left on a short work trip that morning. Our fourth grader had come home with a fever the previous day, but by Thursday morning she was seemingly doing better.

As a precaution, we kept her home from school Thursday. I brought her to get tested for strep, which had been making the rounds at school. Her fever had been gone for almost 24 hours by then; the rapid test for strep and flu were negative. She already had a negative at-home COVID test.

Perfect, I thought. She should be able go back to school Friday.

That Thursday night it snowed for the first time in a great while. It was just a couple inches, but it was a warning: spring had technically started, but winter was still close enough that it could turn around and come back.

A bigger snowstorm was in the forecast for the weekend. Still, I was in good spirits. I wrote about eclipses Thursday night.

On Friday, I would be able to drop the kids off for a few hours for some much-needed solitude. I had already started thinking about the 17 hours worth of things I would do during those three hours. Call some friends I hadn’t seen for a while? Do some more writing? Catch part of a game? Have a peaceful dinner for one?

Early Friday morning my phone rang. I had just finished recording that day’s Daily Delivery podcast and was about to edit it. The number didn’t look familiar, but I answered it.

It was my daughter’s clinic. The throat culture strep test had come back positive even though the rapid test was negative.

Two minutes later our 4-year-old son came down the stairs. He was coughing. Our first-grader was nearly immovable when I tried to wake her up for school. She said she had a sore throat.

Suddenly we had gone from ideal health to zero health. Everyone would stay home that day, and soon enough all three kids were on antibiotics for strep. The big Friday night turned into ordering Noodles & Company and watching a movie with the kids (which, let’s be honest, is still pretty good even if it’s not what I planned).

My wife returned from her trip and she wasn’t feeling so great. By Sunday, I wasn’t doing so hot. Turns out we had strep, too.

Then of course it snowed, and rained, and snowed some more. We got more snow in that March burst than in December, January and February combined.

At least I got to use the snow blower I had purchased at the end of last winter, when shoveling our corner lot for the 86th time finally broke me.

The antibiotics worked well and our girls were back in school Monday. Our son was good to go, too, but his preschool was canceled on Monday and Tuesday.

He was home with us as my wife and I worked remotely, which is sweet because it’s extra time with him but is also sneakily stressful because a 4-year-old has the uncanny ability to only need things or be loud exactly when you need him to chill.

I started antibiotics Sunday and decided I would just power through my week. Just to prove that strep wasn’t going to keep me down or that the curveball of no preschool wouldn’t stop me, I stuck to my plan and did an extra podcast during the week — even as multiple people who had been in Teams meetings or heard the Monday podcast gently told me some version of, “Dude, you don’t sound so great.”

My condition was functional, but clearly a day off would have been a good idea for both my physical health and mental health.

On Wednesday, our fourth-grader had an allergist appointment and between me botching the appointment time by 15 minutes and our two younger kids’ dawdling in the morning before school drop-off — which was right before the appointment — we arrived so late that we had to reschedule.

I had the equivalent of a toddler meltdown at the scheduling desk, announcing that it was ridiculous that we couldn’t be seen that day because we weren’t that late (we were at least 30 minutes past check-in time) and that I would take my allergy business elsewhere (like this was a restaurant and I could just walk down the street to another one). I did everything except ask to see the manager.

After spinning around, I triumphantly marched toward the elevator and angrily pushed the button. My daughter looked at me like, “What is going on?” Before the elevator arrived, I managed to take a deep breath.

What is going on?

We walked back to the scheduling desk. I apologized for acting like an idiot. We rescheduled, and life went on.

I don’t know if I’ve ever reacted so poorly to a minor stressor. This should have been a clue, right? That maybe I wasn’t myself, that maybe we just needed to slow down a bit? But I kept pushing through.

Something within me almost wants to take on more things as a situation deteriorates, just to prove that I can’t be broken.

Thursday was all gas, no brakes. A full day of work, teaching my adjunct class, squeezing in grocery shopping and a play date for our 4-year-old after preschool, driving all our kids to my daughter’s gymnastics meet to drop her off for warmups, driving the two youngest back home to hang out with a neighborhood babysitter while my wife had class, then buzzing back to the meet to watch.

I felt fully present at that meet for a good hour, easily the longest stretch I had been in the moment as opposed to some sort of sick/stressed fog all week.

My daughter was amazing, as always. It was a delight to watch her perform and interact with teammates. I want to bottle that feeling of intentionality because it’s so easy to lose.

Soon enough it was gone.

I had spiraled back into all the things that needed to happen Friday so that we could finally enjoy the weekend: Work. Arrangements with our kind neighbor to watch our dog. Our handyman coming over to measure our countertops. Finalizing one big gift each and one combined gift for my wife and oldest daughter, who were born on the same day and shared a birthday this weekend.

Somewhere in there, our dog ate (another) sock, which always gives him stomach problems. And the basement drain that we quite memorably had to get repaired in January started acting up again.

By Friday afternoon, I was completely spent even though I was well past the worst of the illness. Around 4 p.m. I fell asleep upstairs on our daughter’s bed for 20 minutes after bringing something up to her room.

Who knows how long it would have been if I hadn’t set a timer to make sure I didn’t miss the next thing.

Of course none of this makes me unique or special. If you’re a parent or even just an active participant in #LifeIn2024, you know there are weeks like this. Chances are you have had more of them than us this winter. We made it through in one piece — most of us almost always do — but the ride was bumpy enough to make me appreciate the relative quiet of a mundane, normal week.

All I can think of are vanity and the lessons of life expressed in scenes from two very different Coen brothers movies: “You can’t stop what’s coming" (No Country for Old Men) and the concluding scene from Burn After Reading.

Did I learn not to do it again? To realize that when life is throwing you a lot of unexpected obstacles, it’s OK to slow down a little instead of always pushing through?

We’ll see.

• This is the final post of the month, which comes with a little updating. As promised, I made a $125 donation to the Multiple Sclerosis Society with money from paid subscribers in February, and I will make another donation at the end of this month to ThinkSelf, a local non-profit serving Deaf, DeafBlind, DeafDisabled and Hard of Hearing individuals.

• I have an idea for my next post and I’m excited about it. It has been rolling around in my head for months, and the final piece fell into place recently. With more time and energy, it would already be published. But maybe letting even one thing fall off my plate last week — and realizing that Earth would not cease to spin on its axis if there wasn’t a midweek post — was a small sign of progress. Still: I hope to write that in the next few days and publish it on Thursday.

• If anyone else has ideas for what I should be writing about — or perhaps even podcasting about — I’d love to hear from you. I get a lot of inspiration from things I’m reading, good conversations and simply paying attention to life. I’m sure you do, too. Leave thoughts in the comments; subscribers, you can also reply directly to the emailed newsletter and I will receive your messages.

• And of course happy birthday to my oldest daughter (10) and my wife (more than 10). We’re going to celebrate their birthdays with full appreciation Sunday. I’m not going to say anything else that might jinx it.