Vampires and Grace

Several years ago, when I was very sick, I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that my sore throat had reached excruciating on the pain scale, due mostly to an earache. It was so painful that I couldn't sleep. So I marched clumsily down to the study and googled “natural earache remedies.”

Google is probably not the best doctor. I've learned that any kind of symptom indicator online will inevitably tell me that I have a mild combination of a heart attack, malaria, the Bubonic plague, and congenital diabetes. That being said, when I’m fraught with an earache at the witching hour of the night, I take what advice I can get.

What I found was some interesting information about garlic. Something along the lines of the juices have healing properties, so stick a clove in your ear. Before you judge me as being absolutely insane, please remember that we will all do desperate things when in too much pain to sleep. I went to the kitchen, peeled two cloves of garlic, stuck them in the microwave for a few seconds with some olive oil and then put the cloves in my ears and went back to bed. The remedy was actually mildly successful (I have no idea if the garlic did anything or if simply having something warm in my ears provided temporary relief). It occurred to me as I put my head down on the pillow that (a) I probably looked ridiculous with garlic cloves sticking in my ears, (b) I didn't care so long as they helped, and (c) this would certainly keep all the vampires away.

It’s been sometime since the garlic clove incident and I've been mercifully vampire-free since then, but unfortunately, I still find myself getting sick on a semi-regular basis. This time around, a sudden cold snap triggered an outbreak of running noses and fevers at school. By a week ago Friday, it had become nearly an epidemic, and I was already fighting off the preliminary sore throat. It was somewhat humorous to watch my student sniffle through their exams. There was more blowing of noses than there was analyzing of literature taking place, and the germs whirling around the room were nearly visible.

That weekend was truly cold, but I didn't want to turn the heat on (it’s expensive in Greece). However, by Saturday night, I myself was a sniveling, shivering, aching mess, and I finally decided it was time to raise the temperature in the apartment.

Unfortunately, it was too late to repair the damage already done. I was a wreck on Sunday and decided to take a sick day on Monday. An intense fever took hold and…

This is getting too detailed.

Suffice it to say, I didn’t go back to work until that Wednesday, and I spent the day teaching in exhaustion.

There’s something about teaching when one is recovering from illness that is both splendid and frightening at the same time. Usually, when I return to school after being sick, I haven’t the foggiest notion what I’m teaching. What we covered is a blur, what they did while I was gone is (despite the most detailed sub plans) a fathomless mystery, and what I’m supposed to be teaching them now is a vague, nebulous mass floating towards me in space.

Usually, the best thing to do in this situation is pray. Usually, what I actually do is panic…then pray. Somehow, though, it always seems to work out—some shorter activity end up taking all of class, another teacher has something I need to cover, I discover that I actually had something planned from last time. In short, the return from a bout of heart attack-malaria-plague-diabetes always seems to hold a kind of miracle in it, as though the Almighty is saying, “Look kid, you should still be in bed. I've got this.”

And while I don’t like being sick, sometimes it worth spending some time under the weather just so I get a chance to watch a loving father take care of his foggy-brained kid.

Well, that and the fact that it’s a good excuse to refresh my vampire repellent.