A Pox On Our House

Molli Malou’s third birthday. Greg’s trip to the UK. Summer in Denmark. So, where are the pix? Please tell me Greg didn’t have another camera stolen?

No. This time, for the first time, our Molliblog blackout has been the consequence of consideration for our subject.

Molli Malou turned three last week, as you all know perfectly well.

I was hustling to prepare for my trip to Manchester and didn’t have time before my trip to sort through and post the thousands of pix from the weekend leading up to her birthday.

(I just remembered now that Manchester was the name of my first little league team. That awful coach! The awful orange jerseys! How we envied the crisp blue and white of Pawtucket!)

My first morning in Manchester Trine called and told me that Molli Malou had broken out in Chicken Pox. They had gone up to Mormor’s new summerhouse anyway and were not altogether unhappy.

I got through my two-day training course in Enterprise Guide 4 for SAS (don’t ask), and through the war-footing security of Manchester airport (future Molli Malou, kindly Google “July 2007 UK airports”) and arrived back in CPH Friday night. Saturday morning I hitched a ride with Jørgen up to the summerhouse. Molli Malou was playing in the front yard as we drove up, and Jørgen let me hop out of the car to greet her.

I was physically aching to see her, and a little disappointed by her reaction—to run into the house and exclaim my arrival, rather than to run into my outstretched arms. But she’d still been at a distance. Eventually she turned and raced back to me, and—

Ye gads.

I don’t remember my own Chicken Pox. I don’t remember anyone’s Chicken Pox. But I will never, ever, ever forget the face of my beautiful daughter as she rushed to me for a kiss on the lawn of Mormor’s new summerhouse.

It was the face of Chicken Pox.

Molli Malou has enjoyed her Chicken Pox. It has meant ice-cream and late bedtimes and no kindergarten and hitherto undreamed-of levels of tolerance from her parents. She looks at herself in the mirror and giggles. She takes dozens of self-portraits with both cameras. (Crazy Aunt Lisa, how do I turn off the color saturation histogram that now appears over the display?) She is not shy about it, so I will not be shy about it, but the slowdown has other sources too, that I won’t get into here.

Suffice to say, the Molliblog will soon be resumed. The pics are lined up, but will not be published until the pox upon our home has passed. Hopefully by the end of the weekend. But maybe later.

Just wanted to let you know.