A Pox on Chickenpox (Part 1)

My kids were born several years before the chickenpox vaccine was available. The measles/mumps/rubella vaccine existed, and I dutifully had them inoculated with the MMR shot at the appropriate age. But all we could do was wait to see if they got exposed to the chickenpox.

I remembered the chickenpox from my own childhood. When I was in the first grade, I came home with it. I had a very light case—about 12 pox or so—but they itched fiercely, and I still have a couple of scars from where I scratched when I wasn’t supposed to. My younger brother caught the illness from me, and he had a much worse case—that seems to be the pattern when there are multiple kids in one household.

My father stayed far away from my brother and me when we were ill—he said he’d never had the chickenpox, and he had no desire to get the disease as an adult. Of course, he stayed pretty far away from his kids whenever we had any illness—“pestilence,” he called everything from the stomach flu to the croup to bronchitis to the mumps, and he wanted no part of any of it. But especially not of the chickenpox.

Son a few weeks after the chickenpox. These were the pajamas he wore during his illness. Do you think playing Superman helped his recovery?

Flash forward about a quarter century. In January 1986, my about-to-turn-four-year-old son came home from daycare with spots. Chickenpox had been going through his school, and on a Friday afternoon in January it was clear he had succumbed. He wasn’t very sick, but he could not return to daycare until the spots had scabbed over.

This caused a maternal meltdown. My in-laws were our backup daycare, but they were out of town—out of the country, as I recall. Both my husband and I had commitments the following week. We couldn’t do our usual “split the day” approach to childcare emergencies.

So I called a backup childcare service that contracted with Hallmark to help employees in these situations. I arranged for someone to be at our house on Monday morning.

When the caregiver arrived on Monday, my poor spotted boy looked at me reproachfully. He still wasn’t that sick, but he was uncomfortable and he didn’t want to be left with a stranger. Even the promise of a day at home in his Superman pajamas wasn’t enough to make up for the fact that Mommy was deserting him. (Daddy was deserting him, too, but he didn’t look as reproachfully at Daddy, or maybe that’s just my interpretation.)

This went on for three days. Little boy tears and maternal guilt each morning.

Another post-chickenpox pic. Do you see a superhero theme here?

By Thursday, his spots were scabbing, and he didn’t have any new ones. So I sent him back to daycare. Not quite the quickest case of chicken pox on record, but close. We were fortunate that he wasn’t sicker.

Then a couple of weeks later, his baby sister came down with the chickenpox, and that’s Part 2 of the story.

What caused you parental guilt when your kids were young? Or—a more universal feeling—when did you feel reproachful over how your parents treated you?