We're Dropping Like Flies.. Most of Us

I had a little bird

It's name was Enza

I opened the window

And in-flu-Enza

I remember learning this little poem while in Victoria BC with my parents on "holiday" the summer before I married.  We visited some historic village type place.  It was centered around some famous person I don't remember the name of.  They had all sorts of "fun" facts about songs we sing or sayings we use that came from rather morbid roots.  Like the nursery rhyme "Ring a-round the Rosie"  Morbid indeed.  

I don't know when exactly we opened the window, but Enza definitely has flown in.  We've fought tooth and nail, with vitamins and lozenges and teas, and yet slowly by slowly, we're dropping like flies.  

We girls seem to have had it the worst so far.  Although, today Ethan is in bed with body aches.  And, though he is still in denial, Bruce started sniffling and sneezing yesterday.  

The only one who seems to be immune to Enza's ill affects, is Jesse.   I am puzzled by this.  The boy does everything wrong.. or right to get sick.  He spends countless hours outside in the dreary weather, jacket-less and touching all manner of dig-scusting things.  Three out of four meal times, I realize post meal that his hands are covered in grime and his nails look rather Gollum-esque.  He is the one I have to remind to shower.   The one I have to remind that once you shower, you change your undergarments.  Why?  Why is this dirt loving Pig Pen wanna be the only one who isn't sick?  It's not like the rest of us are germaphobic, instant hand sanitizing Nazis.  We all take the same vitamins.  We all live in the same non-neurotic "clean" house.  

I'm reminded of another history lesson I had.  When we were first married, Bruce befriended an adorable elderly couple.  They were both in their nineties and died before Annah was born.  He was Russian, had lived through the Russian revolution and told stories of the horror and meager living circumstances surrounding the Russian people of that time.  She was Dutch and never spoke of her homeland.  Although, she did tell us about that one day she was working as a clerk in a skyscraper and watched the Hindenburg go down in flames.  Amazing story tellers they were.  Anyway, he told us that while he and his sister were in hiding, making their way through the Black Forest with their Grandmother, they had little to no food.  Sometimes, if they were lucky, they'd have a potato to share amongst their little group of travelers.  When they weren't so lucky, Grandma would make soup.  She'd boil roots, grasses, and ROCKS.  They would suck up the nutrient rich broth, and that would sustain them through the cold, wretched wandering they had to endure to come to freedom.  

Maybe, just maybe Jesse is more nutrient rich because he touches all of that stuff outside and by not washing ingests some bacteria fighting goodness God put in creation all around us.  Whatever his secret to staying healthy is, I'm certain it isn't something his cleaner family is going to figure out in the near future.