A long summer

It’s so hard to come back to a blog where the months have been a big black hole. I want to start at the beginning but really I don’t quite know what or where that is. So I’ll just start where I can and hope my words make sense.

The summer vacation was 10 weeks this year (up from 9) to accommodate a switch over of campuses at school. I wrote briefly about our beach vacation. It was in spectacular Fiji and was really the kind of vacation that is likely to stay with us for a time to come. 

We then celebrated his 8th birthday (again and again) in Singapore with family and friends and had some fun times reminiscing about our lives there. It was back to Hong Kong after that for 2+ weeks and this really was quite marvelous for Kid and I. V was already back at work and putting in the hours. We on the other hand woke up late, ate cereal while watching cartoons and generally aimed to do one or two things a day - so a play date or a swim or a movie or a bookshop excursion or a hike or a tram ride or museum visit or dinner with V after work. Our days were slow and un-rushed and we read, coloured, cooked and ate a lot. 

Before we knew it August was here and we went to Delhi to see my parents and brother/ sil and his new baby. What was meant to be a 2 week relax in Delhi where I dreamed of doing everything slowly and sitting and playing with the baby, was anything but. After a couple of days in Delhi Kid and I made a whirlwind 3 day trip to Chennai so I could finish some work, meet both aunts, cousins, niece and nephew. Another few days in Delhi and then we joined V in Mumbai for 3 days to visit his family. Kid was delighted to be reunited with Cousin P whom he had just seen in Singapore. Then it was back to Delhi for just 4 days before heading back to HK. And in those 4 days we couldn’t play with baby because he had a cold and his new parents and doctor thought it best he not be touched by outside hands. Instead we had long lunches with my parents and met a cousin and a friend at leisure. It was lovely but also exhausting. I felt drained by the time I got on the plane home - both physically and mentally. 

I got home and within hours had a cold and fever and stayed in bed for nearly 2 days. Then we had a day of everyone feeling fine. On the Tuesday Kid complained of a headache (he’s never had one so my antenna re meningitis immediately sprang up). Then during lunch he said his tummy hurt (something he says regularly in India but is usually short lived while he adjusts to the very different food) and halfway through lunch he puked. That was it. He showered and went to bed and woke up a few hours later puking and with a fever. The puking wouldn’t stop and at 11pm we took him to the ER. The doctor said it was definitely not meningitis and instead probably a virus but gave him a shot to stop the puking anyway. It didn’t work. He puked on the way home and again at home. He finally slept fitfully for about 4 hours. 

And so it went for 3 days. His pediatrician whom we visited the next day said he’d just have to get it out of  his system one way or another. So he slept great swathes with the help of pain killers, ate nothing and puked out whatever virus it was. He tried an ice lolly and a cracker on day 3. On day 4 he was better, the fever was gone and he managed to keep down banana, rice and a cracker. But he had lost over 3 kilos in the process. 

Luckily we still had nearly 1.5 weeks before school began. And so it was the slow recovery, increasing what he could eat and trying to hold back (unsuccessfully) an 8 year old from playing wildly for hours with friends who were beginning to trickle in after a summer away. 

And in what was simultaneously as slow as drip coffee and as fast as a rapid the summer was over. Beside that bout of illness and the exhaustion of so many cities/ countries it was pretty awesome. Every year I say we should do less, park ourselves in one place, not visit multiple places and every year that turns out to be a big Fail/ Win. I’m happy to be home though now and have resisted going anywhere this Fall break (India - where V is for a few days. Chengdu - to see pandas and the LeShan Buddha. V was trying to talk me into both). Instead Kid and I are chilling. And I am trying to breathe life back into this here blog.