And then she knew it was okay to let go

I think I have turned the corner. On being sick. Not that I mean, exactly, that I'm getting better. I am, getting better, but that's not what I mean. I mean I think I have finally turned the corner on "being sick." If you don't know me, and even if you do, you might not know I get weird when I get sick. The harder I try not to, the worse I get, like the Melvin Udall character Nicholson played in "As Good As It Gets."

Okay, here's the deal. I pride myself on being sturdy and strong. An Ernest Borgnine-approach to solid and robust living. My dad has it. I have it. My dad gets weird when he's sick, too.

I have a really bad cold with a hacking cough, dizzy head, achy and fatigued body. Like Meg Ryan in "You've Got Mail," where she comes to the door in her trenchcoat over pajamas and Tom Hanks brings her daisies. Like that. Only my sick routine started as it always does. I fool myself. Thursday morning I was losing my voice and the cold had worked its way into my chest. I called in to work and told them I would work from home. "Call me if you need me. I'll have my cell on all day and will be checking e-mail." I had some manuscript home and spread it all out in my pretty, light-filled dining room. It seemed it was almost a treat to be sick. (This is the fooling myself part.) I started working through the manuscript but the words got pretty fuzzy and I couldn't make any decisions without consulting the dictionary or Chicago Manual of Style or even Wikipedia, and if I was freelancing I would have been making $3.25/hour at best: What is the usage, plural or singular, for asparagus? Is Lake Vermilion one or two "ells"? I gave up when I couldn't decide on hyphens and commas for "old-fashioned, bricks-and-mortar business," and got up from the table. Cooking. I need to cook something good and hearty, something with the restorative powers of chicken soup.

I was more successful at this task but, of course, I'm still missing the point. There is no need to be productive. I'm sick. I don't know. I worry that if I give in, it might spiral into something else. Something worse. I jump ahead too much. I push recovery before I even have a chance to get sick. I also push reconciliation before a fight really unfolds. I'm terrible at transitions. Having a cold is like a transition. You're feeling fine and suddenly there is "something" there in your nose or your throat. And it could go away tomorrow or it could develop into the full-blown flu. I can't stand waiting to find out.

I knew I had some turkey thighs in the fridge (really, you should buy these. They're cheap and full of meat for things like turkey curry and turkey pot pie). And onions. And some old bread from Great Harvest. I found the perfect recipe--an old Colonial turkey recipe from Epicurious.com and I worked at that pot of Stewed Turkey with Herbs and Onions for the rest of the morning (www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/235929). It was restorative and tasty and a big hit with the hubby but by the time he got home I was hacking and clutching my mangy cardigan like an old Baltimore widow who spends her miserable days with her cats and her cigarettes and her overworked Reader's Digest crossword puzzles.

Yet, still, I forged ahead.

My son said he was bored and I told him I was bored so we agreed we should venture out to the local Barnes and Noble so he could use his Christmas gift card. I could browse through magazines and we could be back within the hour. I decided to go with my black leggings and mangy cardigan and barrette-clipped hair. It didn't matter. I was sick, after all. He grabbed another sequel of WarCraft and I grabbed a copy of SELF (Lose 8 Pounds in 30 Days!) and we put our chairs in front of the picture windows and our feet on the ledge, and again I thought being sick wasn't really so bad. So what if I got a little behind on my deadlines? And then one of the pretty girls from my son's class walked by and did a double-take at Tim, then at me, and then waved to us both, and my son just looked at me and shook his head and closed his book and said it was time to go.

I dropped him off at hockey practice and decided to make one last stop. I thought it might be a good time to finally read Susan Sontag's "Illness as Metaphor." I had, in fact, just recently finished "On Photography," and why not read her treatise on sickness when I was myself feeling under the weather? (Yeah, I know, I'm just shaking my stuffy head here writing this.) I climbed the steps to the Hillcrest Library and got seriously winded. The temperatures have dropped quite a bit here in Minnesota, and now my chest was so tight I could hardly breathe. I found the Sontag book near Andrew Weil's "8 Weeks to Optimum Health," and also "Surviving Anxiety Disorder," and "When Women Do Too Much."

And then inside the library's reading circle with its low cushions and colorful mobiles I saw this very loving mother tug down a red handknit cap over her four-year-old son's head; and then tenderly, tenderly, she straightened his little horn-rimmed glasses for him, and I almost cried a bit. I left the Health and Wellness aisle and went over to Fiction. I found Curtis Sittenfeld's "The Man of My Dreams," and Jennifer Weiner's "The Guy Not Taken," and Stephen Chbosky's "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," and as I checked them out I imagined my sorry little self being cheered on by an Oprah crowd.

I haven't left my living room all day today. I haven't checked e-mail. I haven't cleaned the counters or written a list of New Year's resolutions. I'm almost done with the first breezy novel. I haven't been snarky about my cardigan or my two-day-old sick hair, and I've called out to various family members for tea, take-out chicken noodle soup, and hot buttered popcorn. The personal IS political. I am woman. Hear me cough.