A Timely Cough and a Surprise Midnight Visitor

No, it wasn’t Santa arriving early, but close enough

I’ve been feeling a bit yucky recently.

A cold that has started to feel more flu-like in the last couple of days has been plaguing me. And then, yesterday, I could feel my chest getting all congested.

I can handle some seasonal maladies but when it starts to affect my sleep, that’s when I get really annoyed. So, as I lay in bed last night with dull aches in my body and a constant feeling of needing to clear my chest, I felt a little worn down and bummed out.

In these last few days of November, I am busy preparing for the mad onslaught that December brings.

My eldest daughter, who flew from Turkey to Manchester last Wednesday after nearly three months away, has been saying that she will head home around the first of December, so having her room ready was one of the things on my list.

Then, in the first half of December, we have her birthday, closely followed four days later by my son’s. This year I am all about paying for “experiences” instead of material gifts so we have an afternoon in a spa planned for the big girl’s birthday (a girls only treat) and a family afternoon at The Eden Project in Cornwall with ice skating for my son’s birthday.

We have a list of Christmas markets we absolutely cannot miss, and then we have Christmas, of course. By which time, just like every year, I will probably collapse in a big heap and refuse to show my face to the world for several days.

So, with all that in mind, being organised before December hits felt vitally important. My oven is finally being fixed next week (yes, we definitely need it for Christmas), my car is having its annual MOT the same day (I had a smashed wing mirror care of some asshat delivery driver to change in preparation), and my nephew and I spent yesterday cleaning windows — because shiny, clean surfaces always make Christmas feel complete.

Back to my achy, congested body last night, I had settled down to sleep and, as usual, turned off my phone. Despite my body’s unwillingness to let me relax properly, I eventually drifted off to sleep at around 11 pm, only to be woken forty minutes later from having a coughing fit.

I know I had only been asleep for about forty minutes because, once my coughing fit was over, I turned my phone back on. I don’t really know why, or what I planned to do on my phone. Sometimes I read on my Kindle App when I can’t sleep but my eyes felt too drained to focus so I put the phone down on the side and my head back on the pillow.

A moment later, I heard a knock on the front door, too gentle to have had any chance at waking me had I still been asleep. Surprised, I turned the lamp on and began putting some socks on to go downstairs.

Who it could be at this time, I had no idea. I imagined that my car must have been blocking a neighbour in or something, though logically I knew that it wasn’t. But what else could it be?

Just as I was about to go downstairs, I heard my phone vibrating and saw my eldest daughter’s name on the screen. I answered.

“Hi!”

“Hi! I’m outside!”

After the initial hugs and the “how are you here now?” questions, I hauled her inside.

It turns out that the friend with whom she was staying in Manchester had suddenly discovered that she had an entire term’s worth of work to complete for her university course in the next three weeks. So she’d had to put her head down and ignored my daughter as a result.

On a whim, my daughter decided to hop on a bus to Birmingham, and then another one to Exeter, and then got a friend to give her a lift back here.

I sat and made some very welcome cups of hot ginger, lemon and honey, and the two of us sat in the kitchen drinking this warming concoction while she told me all about her last three months; the yoga farm she had been volunteering at where she had found great happiness, and the unintentional new circle of yoga-loving friends. She taught me a few words in Turkish as we crept our way slowly into Sunday morning.

This all happened before retiring to bed for the second time that night/morning and attempting a cough-less sleep. I rested, happy with my newly full house a few days earlier than expected.

I did wonder, however, at the serendipitous timing of my cough and whether she was relying on me being awake to open the door for her.

I have a feeling that she simply has a natural knowing that everything will work out just right.

Michele Maize also had a happy reunion this week with her eldest daughter. The return of our grown kids is more than special!

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