Piggy Pink

By the time we reached Pittsburgh I was enough stuffed up to crash. I looked around for the tissues box, my husband found me a wastebasket, and giving myself up to the sofa, there I mostly stayed. I kept to the one end, so as not to blow my germs on anybody, and as much as the head fog allowed, I chattered along.

But you know children. They want to crowd closer and closer.

In the evening, I guessed if Youngest, who loves her picture books, retreated to the area between the sofa and the wall, behind my head, I could read some stories. Then I guessed if she could get her teeth brushed and get herself to bed, I could read a little more. Upstairs, though, I didn’t slip into the bed with her. Sitting on the climb-up-to-her-bunk steps, the bed railing serving as our barrier, I read parallel to her.

The other sofa in the living room, across from mine, allowed my husband and me our own infirmary suite that night. I could hew to my space. In the morning, though, family wafting to and from the room, Middle Child and Youngest decided they wanted to paint my toenails.

Well, why not? I could stay semi-safely put, not get in their faces.

Red polish, I said, not that ugly whatever-that-color-is, when they came back with a bottle from Oldest’s vast trove upstairs. They scurried off. But the red, when they found some, had gone stiff in the bottle. And they liked their pick. Mauve, maybe. They preferred the mauve. And look, they could topcoat the sickliness with sparkles.

Tenderly, adjacent to me, slightly out of the line of direct viral transmission, Middle Child slick-shined my toes. Middle Child did Youngest’s fingers, too, and then we matched.

Back home, now, I think it’s more a necrotic shade than mauve. But maybe that’s because I’m still at death’s door, woozy and fuggy and clogged up. Maybe, when I’m normal again, I’ll call it summer grape, or sweet piggy peppermint pink. Maybe then.