Home for the Holidays

I guess we're still in the middle of the holidays because we're still doing it. We've travelled to Georgia, spent time with family, been sick, enjoyed Radio City Music Hall's Christmas Show and experienced a deb cotillion. Today I'm enjoying a Mom day at home with a sick child. Kate is never sick. But she is today. And I'm never home. But I am today. And it all reminds me of being sick when I was a child which is when I think my Mother was the nicest. I got to stay in her room, listen to soap operas on the radio, and be a queen propped up in her bed on thick pillows and watching the activity of the household swirl around me. And maybe because of that -- or not -- I was sick a lot. Kate is rarely sick and has thrown up only twice to my knowledge. So when she says that she doesn't feel well, I pay strick attention and poor kid she has the same stomach virus that I picked up in Columbus. But our cousins are made of sterner stuff because they just kept on going through incredibly hectic and exhausting times. I started mainlining Pepto Bismal and looking wan. That's ok because I shed 5 pounds, it's just sad that I will probably find these 5 pounds again waiting for me. But for Kate I'm also really wanting her to be on form because she sits for the competitive entrance exam for Hunter next Friday. The pediatrician recommended what I call the white diet which is bland food, bed rest and something to ease her stomach cramps but there is clearly no medicine for this. So irritating because I wasn't sick enough to be out of it but never well enhough to be seriously in it. I began to dispair that I would ever be well. And everytime I felt better I managed to inhale a cheeseburger and then feel ghastly again.

I kept imagining that it was the food I ate in Columbus. We left New York in really freezing weather and landed with a full schedule de rigeur parties, luncheons where we were served Gumbo, Chili, cheese grits and plum pudding. It's amazing what you can eat when you feel well. Burp. Oh, yes, ham biscuits were the flavor of the evening for the Cotillion where Lucy Banks made her last bow as a deb. I think the season in Columbus is far more serious than it was in when I was az deb in New York. I had two parties and thought that they were both great to the horror of my parents. However they nicely went along with this. And John and Lucy also went along with a Lucy Banks interest in being a deb but in smaller communities it has much more of a pot latch effect. I had a great time and know that Kate did. Arnie started to crumble under the feeling of being in a totally alien experience and I think worrying about Kate as a minority. She was oblivious to that aspect and I reminded Arnie that I've been to several bar miotzvah which are totally alien experiences to me and I survived.

Then as soon as we got back to town, Kate and I had our annual outing to Radio City Music Hall and I was tickled to think that she still wants to do this. I love it and think it's a great mommy daughter outing. She wanted a hat filled with cotton candy which she wanted more than she wanted to go to Bar Pitti. Big surprise to me. But ok. Then when we left she wanted to take a pedi cab but that was fine with me because I knew our dinner out would be at the local coffee shop. And when we got to the coffee shop, she took one look at the menu and said she wasn't hungry. AZ perfect evening because we both got what we wanted.