Sick Away From Home

The saddest sound is a call from your child when she is sick. Carter is on a trip and is sick. Even though she is with Claire she still calls to tell me she is sick. And the worst thing is she is so far away I can’t do anything about it.

When she was 12 or 13 she went to Taiwan to go to school in the summer. She lived with a family we didn’t know. One day she got the flu. Everyone in her “family” had to go to work so she stayed home alone. So she called me from Taiwan.

Russ and I were on a trip to Seattle and Oregon. We were hiking in the middle of know where and my phone rang. It was the saddest wail I had ever heard.

Carter was sick. Nothing too terrible, but she just wanted her Mom. She was half a world away. There was nothing I could do, but tell her she would get better. Which she did.

A couple of days later I called her to check in and it was as if that sickness had never happened. She was 12 or 13. How quickly she snapped out of needing her mother.

It is nice that even your adult child still needs you when they are sick. And it still hurts my heart when I can’t do anything about it.