Set list

Even as L. oversees a flourishing study abroad program in public health, both she and I continue to receive an ad hoc tutorial in pediatrics, right at home. After 11 days of antibiotics, Cleo seemed to have triumphed over Lyme disease: she was upbeat and energetic for much of last week, and the tick bite had shrunk to small dot on her ankle. But then, on Friday night, the spots arrived.

Dime-sized blotches that soon bled into larger discolored circles, they covered much of Cleo’s abdomen and legs by mid-Saturday. And as she scratched at them, we went through a ritual that’s no doubt familiar to almost all parents of our generation: the online search for a medical explanation. Soon enough, using various picture galleries and drop-down menus of symptoms, we’d ruled out most of the more sinister candidates, and settled on hives. Usually relatively benign, hives are nonetheless rather enigmatic, and their cause is often impossible to ascertain. A reaction to the many doses of penicillin she’d ingested? Possible? Her body rejecting something in South Africa honey? Also possible. And on, and on: as her doctor told us yesterday, most cases are never entirely explained. Regardless, L. and I were simultaneously comforted to know that it wasn’t something worse, and daunted to realize that she’d have to go on a program of antihistamines.

From Cleo’s point of view, though, the news wasn’t all grim. After all, she doesn't resent medicine, if it tastes reasonable (and here a shout-out to the chemical engineers who developed a vanilla-flavored syrup is the meet and right thing), and she’s never unhappy to spend a day or two in the comfortable confines of home, playing with the parents. So that’s what we did: all Sunday and Monday, L. and I traded off and then joined in together, keeping an eye on her symptoms as we tried to devise new games that can be played with legos, kitchen spoons, and blankets. The spots swelled, the clock turned, and we did the simplest kind of parenting imaginable: playing with our daughter.

But how exactly, you might wonder, does one pass ten hours, and then another ten, with a sick girl? Sure, brief outings to the aquarium and the cable car can help to break up the day. But we really were inside for most of the time, and as game gave way to game I was reminded of the set lists that bands produce before a show. Here's one from a 2010 show in London: care to try to name the source?

Anyway, we moved, like a band, from number to number, and stage right to stage left. Pretending to change diapers on each other gave way to a game of hide and seek; while we were playing that, Cleo noticed her drawing board, and started to draw, alternately, the sun and the moon, expecting me to rise and slumber with each new motif. Then she suggested that we pretend to oversleep, and we spent several minutes trying to rouse each other from deep pretend rest, until her eye drifted to a board game that features marbles, which we spun and rolled, and used as props in a make-believe casino game of roulette. And so on: such a list, I suppose, soon grows tedious, but at the same time it points to the sheer fluidity and variety of play with a 3-year-old.

She's already feeling better - even if, as the rash is receding, she's now contracted a cold. But that doesn't mean - not yet, at least - an end to the show. At 7:50 this morning, we were busy building a puppet theater, whose contours were clear only to Cleo. And this afternoon, that theater will inevitably give way to another, newer idea. The show goes on, and yet it's always also evolving.