Danny ChaiRough week for the Chai family. Everyone got sick. Lots of vomiting and diarrhea all around. Even now still suffering from mild gas and indigestion issues.
It takes sickness to appreciate the wellness though; without getting sick, we would take being well for granted. My favorite work by St. Augustine is On Free Choice Of The Will, because it deals with fascinating stuff, is organized as a Socratic dialog (my favorite philosophical structure), and is short. In the dialog, someone asks the question asked frequently since time immemorial until now: if God created us and made us the way we are, how can we be punished for the bad we do? Isn’t it ultimately God’s fault that we are the way we are, including the bad?
As part of the response, Augustine replies that if God didn’t punish us for the bad we do, how could he reward us for the good we do? It actually doesn’t answer the question at all, but it points out an inconsistency in the way people commonly think – while we don’t think it’s fair to be punished for being bad since God made us that way, we nevertheless do think we deserve to be rewarded. Put another way, many people have problems with the idea that a creator God would send some people to Hell. Few (if any) have a problem with the idea that a creator God would send people to heaven. Which, if you think about it, is logically inconsistent.
That’s completely irrelevant to what I was talking about. Anyway, yeah, sickness. Joshua started off on Monday by vomiting 3 times (first and last time in the crib, which is disgusting). He had diarrhea the rest of the week. Jieun woke up sick and vomiting on Tuesday, so I got the kids ready, did breakfast, and took Joshua with me to drive Abby to preschool. Stayed home to take care of Joshua (and Jieun). Got a call from preschool that Abby threw up. Went to get her with Joshua, brought her home, worried the whole time that she was going to throw up in the car, but she refused to hold a bucket or bag. I was right to be worried – she started making gagging noises during the drive so I hastily parked on the side of the road, ripped her out of her seat just in time, and held her while she threw up on the road (apologies, road by TGI Fridays on Wolfe).
Spent the rest of the day trying to prevent Abby from throwing up on stuff in the house (to varying degrees of success – she kept insisting that she wasn’t going to throw up and resisted my efforts to take her to the bathroom or hold anything up to her mouth, right up to the moment that she threw up, 7 times total), trying to watch Joshua, and trying to let Jieun rest in the midst of her own 7 bouts of vomit (also to varying degrees of success – she sadly had to help with the kids while violently ill). Ah parenthood.
Fortunately, the vomiting only lasted a day. And I didn’t throw up myself. I did get explosive diarrhea the next day, but I’m half convinced that I wasn’t sick, but that I gave it to myself. I mean, the whole family had been throwing up constantly – I spent the next day filled with extreme dread, just waiting for the hammer to fall. I think it was that tightness that gave me the runs, not a virus.
Good times.
Anyway, if you see Jieun, give her a little extra love, because this mostly happened on her birthday, so we didn’t really get to celebrate. Plus it sucks being that sick on your birthday.