Nine years ago, I attended a Guns N’ Roses concert with my friend, Heather, at Gillette Stadium.
At the time, I had pneumonia. Elysha and I had just returned from celebrating our tenth anniversary in Maine, where I also knew I had pneumonia, but I didn’t tell Elysha because I didn’t want to ruin our getaway weekend. Instead, I moved slowly, relaxed, rested a lot, and didn’t try to fit everything possible into one day. I watched the sun go down, slept late into the morning, and chilled.
Later, Elysha would tell friends, “I think I liked pneumonia Matt more than regular Matt.”
When we arrived home, I told Elysha I had pneumonia. She thought I was crazy, but two hours later, a chest X-ray confirmed it. It was my third bout of pneumonia in eight years, so my doctor gave me the pneumonia vaccine, which, in her words, she gives to “75-year-old widows and you.”
I didn’t even know a pneumonia vaccine existed.
Then I went to the Guns N’ Roses concert the next day.
This meant moving at the speed of a wounded snail and sitting for most of the concert. Happily, we had seats in the front row of a section, so I was able to enjoy the concert with my butt in the seat.
On Friday night, Charlie and I attended the Celtics game in Boston. He wasn’t feeling well but was determined to go.
Who was I to stop him?
By the end of the game, he was feeling pretty awful:
Coughing and chills. Dragging his feet. “I’m a wreck,” he said as we made our way through the snow to the parking garage.
Yes. Snow in April. We awoke the next morning with a lawn covered with the white stuff.
Elysha took him to the doctor the next day to ensure he didn’t have COVID or the flu. We were scheduled to leave for Niagara Falls and Canada the next day.
A lovely, week-long vacation to our neighbors in the north, combined with a business dinner with about 25 Canadian entrepreneurs.
But Charlie has the flu. The doctor said she didn’t even need to set the timer on his test. It immediately registered positive, which meant our plans had been derailed. We planned this same trip for April 2020, but you know what happened then.
Once again, we have been denied. Instead of visiting Niagara Falls and Toronto, we are home during the April vacation, hoping he’s healthy enough for a day or two in New York Coty at the end of the week.
But my business dinner is still happening, of course, so now, instead of a lovely drive north with my family, I’m flying into Toronto for my business meeting, which is fine but also annoying and much less fun.
I’m writing this post at Dulles International Airport in Washington DC, suffering through the second of two delays that will land me in Canada well after midnight.
Flying is so much fun.
But the silver living:
Charlie cared enough about the Celtica game to tough it out while suffering from the flu.
Just like I toughed it out with pneumonia to visit Maine and see Guns N’ Roses.
Life father, like son.
