Empathy

I lost my voice yesterday afternoon.

Well, it's not completely gone, but it might as well be. I don't talk a lot at work, most days, so I'm not sure when it moved beyond simply "raspy," but by the time Matt and the kids got home, I sounded like a pubescent frog. With another frog in its throat. While trying to gargle. And run a marathon.

And that's when there's a sound at all. It's been cutting out for short periods where all I can do is whisper.

The good news is that it's not as bad as it sounds. (If it were that bad, I'd be checking into a hospital right now.) It's mostly just a little bit sore, and kind of thick-feeling. It's worse during the night, but still not horrible.

So the fact that I feel mostly okay meant that I could enjoy Penny's reaction to the sound of my half-gone voice.

"Mommy, why do you sound like that?" she asked, as we were sitting down to dinner.

"BecAUse I'm sICk."

"Does your throat still hurt?"

"YeAh, a LITtlE."

She cast me a sympathetic look across the dining table. "I know," she said, in exactly the tone I reserve for soothing pains that I can't do anything to help. "I know it hurts, I know..." This is more or less what I say, too. She was actually crooning. "You'll feel better soon. I know it's bad, I know. It'll be okay."

If we hadn't been sitting around the dinner table, I think she might've tried to rock me or stroke my hair. I wanted to laugh, because it was so damned adorable, but she probably would've taken it the wrong way.

She went on to suggest that I'd go see a doctor and that the doctor would help me get better. (I didn't try to contradict this -- it's a cold, I'm already doing everything that the doctor would suggest anyway.) The show of empathy was sweet, though.

(Burgeoning empathy did not, however, stop her from picking out one of her longer storybooks for me to read at bedtime. It's a good thing my throat doesn't actually hurt that much...)