Rite of Passage

Dear John,

There is a rite of passage that I really thought you and your sister were not going to experience.  It's not a fun rite of passage and I guess I should have been glad for you to miss it, but somehow the idea that there was this significant childhood event that the miracle of modern medicine took from your young life was a little sad to me.

I'm speaking, of course, of the chicken pox.  When I was a child, everyone got chicken pox.  It was preferential to get the chicken pox as a child and a mild case was considered a mixed blessing since it could lead to reinfection later.  Chicken pox was an itchy scratchy nuisance of an illness in children that could be life threatening to adults.  It was also troublesome to parents who had to stay home with their infected offspring for a week or more.  Being a virus, it was something that once gotten was usually over for life and was also something that could be vaccinated against like the bigger, tougher virus of measles, mumps, polo, scarlet fever and others.

So like most of your peer group, you and your sister were vaccinated and we figured chicken pox was something you would just never experience.

It certainly wasn't something we thought about a week and a half ago when you and your sister both had these strange little ant bites... hers on her back, yours on your chest.  We didn't think about it when you got three more of these little bites on your back.  We did check the beds for bed bugs.  We did check the laundry detergent to make sure we hadn't switched brands by mistake.  We even considered other random viral rashes... fifth disease, sixth disease, I googled them all.

But these "bites" lacked the size and scope of chicken pox as I remembered them.

I took you to daycare this morning and even Ms. Carie was baffled.  It didn't look like chicken pox to her, although her years of early childhood experience told her February is the prime month for it (who knew?).  But she circled your six or seven spots and said she would call if you got any more.

She called just as my students were going out to lunch and recess.

I took you to the doctor and that's where I learned the difference between what I thought of as "chicken pox" and what the doctor called "breakthrough varicella."

It's the same thing, really.... chicken pox and varicella.

But because you were vaccinated, your body is already fighting the virus even as you are symptomatic.  It's why tonight you have a grand total of 12-15 blisters instead of a couple hundred.  It's why it was so hard to tell what it was you had.  The doctor was able to find only three blisters on your entire body that looked like textbook varicella.  Once she pointed them out to me, I could see the head clearly and even see the brown pinprick scab on one of them.

I have to say, if chicken pox has to happen, if it is a rite of passage a child really needs to have, this sort of chicken pox is the way to go.

You have to really look to see the ones of your torso and right at your neck.  Your back is where the "better" blisters are.

Not exactly the disease as I remember it from my childhood, but I accept as a rite of passage nonetheless.

You have chicken pox.  I do not understand why that is satisfying to me, but it is.

That you can have it with no fever, little itching, and almost no chance of scarring is the wonder of the world you live in.

Love,
Mom