The Ties That Bind

Life -- as usual -- has taken a twist with a wry flavour. My six-year-old niece has been really unwell over the past week or more. Really unwell. She's been lethargic, vomiting, hasn't eaten or drunk anything for many days. She went into hospital today and it looks like she has pneumonia.

A day or two ago I heard her crying in bed; I went in to comfort her and find the cause -- she was terrified she was dying. Tiny and skinny with great dark circles under her eyes, she looked it, to be frank. I almost cried with her. No amount of stickers or cuddles or soothing words could calm the fear of the needles and tubes and beeping instruments as she huddled, rigid, in the enormous and foreign hospital bed today.

A couple of days prior her 3 year old sister disappeared, and we thought she'd run off down the street, as she has a habit of doing from time to time. We'd been frantically searching the neighbourhood for a while -- me by the creek, her mother anxiously along the main road -- when I heard her screaming from our house. She'd been there all along, but was hiding as we went around calling her name, then panicked when it dawned on her that we'd both left the house. When I made it back to her at the gate and picked her up she gripped tight to my body and howled.

Why wry? One of the factors that made taking off around the world seem so appealing was my relative lack of ties. These events have only served to highlight the ignorant stupidity of that idea in big fluorescent arrows, several rows of underlining and a twenty point bold typeface. I have ties a-plenty.

Elder Niece's pleas for me not to leave are becoming more frequent, and more heart-breaking. I'm beginning to understand why people grow less mobile as they grow older. The wonderful thing to come out of all of this, though, is that it's brought home just how important a place I hold in this family. Seems strange to say it, but I'd never really noticed that before.