Under siege

Shostakovich wrote his seventh symphony while in Leningrad, as the city underwent a brutal Nazi siege. Alexander Borodin wrote his second, supposedly, while sick and confined to a bed. Vaughan Williams wrote his fifth while simultaneously spending most of his creative energy on his opera, The Pilgrim's Progress. And your faithful scribe, on a sunny day in Cape Town, writes in another stolen moment, as his little daugher sleeps.

And sleeps, and sleeps, because she's come down with her first ear infection, and needs her rest. Rather like the weather here - scudding clouds one hour; brilliant, heartbreaking sun the next - Cleo's health, and temperature, changed dramatically in a short time. Yesterday, I think, was the best day of the entire trip thus far: after a Sunday morning breakfast-and-swing stop at every Capetonian's favorite cafe/playground, we drove around Table Mountain, and down into Camps Bay, with its fair beach, rocky tide pools, seaside grocery, and occasional celebrity sightings. No Brangelina this time, but we had a terrific time splishing about between boulders, watching gulls shatter mussel shells, and eating coarse gouda sandwiches as our rolled-up pants legs dried. It's easy to forget, on the south side of the mountain, that this city has a beach culture; after seeing the surfers, and the paragliders, and the kids playing rugby in the sand, it was equally difficult to fathom ever forgetting that fact again.

Cleo held up well, but it was clear that she was flagging by the early evening, and when we got home, at around 5, she offered a vigorous indication that this was something more than mere exhaustion: let's just say that within a few minutes I was washing a rug, and then giving her a warm bath to wash off the day's rejected lunch. She went to bed shortly after, with little more than a gesture at a protest, slept a good, full night for the first time in weeks - and woke up with a 103-degree temperature, a breath that smelled of acetone, and a limp, listless little body. Time to call the doctor, in other words, and L. soon drove Cleo to the local clinic, where she was given the diagnosis - ear infection - and some antibiotics and stomach restoratives. And now Cleo is in the fourth hour of a mammoth nap, and the blog receives renewed attention.

One wishes, of course, that toddlers were never sick. And that cities were never besieged. But perhaps even such difficulties can bear fruit, both famous, as with a symphony, and modest, as in this missive.